Right now, downvotes (reduces) don’t federate to (and from?) Kbin instances. This lack of federation makes the downvote counter really inaccurate—a comment that looks like it’s +10 might be -15 when you look at it from lemmy.world.
This leaves me with a few questions:
- Is downvote federation going to be implemented?
- If so, is it a priority or something that’ll happen much further down the line?
- If not, will downvoting be removed?
Not having downvotes at all makes the exact reason I dont like kbin even worse. A lack of downvotes is, in part, what made facebook so vividly toxic and rife with hate speech and fake news. When a site lacks upper moderation and a method of inter-community moderation, there is no way to filter out bad content and bad users.
Removing downvotes is something wanted by people who dont want content filtered. Showing downvotes is something wanted by people who want to weaken filters. Weak or nonexistent filters is what allows the worst aspects of the internet to fester and rot.
I did literally say I am drawn towards instances that would refuse to federate with privacy free instances, which includes the ones that make votes public. In the exact same way I would not want federation with instances that make your ip or view history public.
I mean beehaw has no downvotes and they’re not toxic at all if viewed from within their instance.
Understandable. I don’t view showing downvotes as weakening filters—I see how it could deter downvoting to some extent, but in my experience, it leads to people handing out downvotes less freely and when it’s more justified as opposed to not downvoting at all. Nevertheless, I see where you’re coming from, and I want to stress that I think it’s completely fair to not want people to see if you’ve downvoted them.
Note: I don’t think defederating from an instance prevents them from seeing your content (according to this thread), so I’m not sure if defederation would make your votes private.
Detering downvotes weakens downvotes as a filter, by definition. “More justified” means “when I think I wont be scrutinized for the decision,” which means racist content that is walking the line is now unfiltered, at risk of someone yelling at you because they didnt hear the dog whistle. Low but-not-shit quality content is now unfiltered from risk of the small group who disagree (or its creator) harassing you for “insulting” the work by casting a vote on it.
“More justified” is such a nebulous and flimsy take on a panopticon voting system.
If defederation doesnt shield those votes from non admins, then the devs should be working to prevent that. Thats a bad bad bad sign for federation future. Thats a gaping hole in armor against both extremist groups and moderation of content quality.