I read on reddit that on Lemmy you can see users’ upvote/downvote history. I therefore expected to be able to see upvote/downvote breakdown by user for my own comments. But couldn’t find this. Does this feature exist or is that a myth?
Hmmm, tbh, I don’t think that’s a feature I’d want. Every now and again you see “that guy” furious that he’s getting downvotes, doubling down and trying to start an argument or something. I don’t need that guy showing up in my DMs.
Yeah only necessary for the admins to see vote manipulation bots.
Oooh, good point. As an admin/moderator feature, that’s a much better idea.
Nah not for mods, there are communitys with certain mods that already behave like u/awkwardturtle did just and only for the admins
It actually already is a feature. Kbin puts it upfront, and I think lemmy also has a way to access it.
I think it remains to be seen whether or not it’s a good idea.
I’ve seen some people say they like the idea because it make people think twice about downvoting - it cuts back on the instinctive “I don’t like this so I am gonna downvote.”
But, as you said, do we really want people coming after you because you downvoted them? There are crazy ass people out there, and if you ever get doxxed it could be a problem.
Maybe that last point is hyperbole, but crazy people are gonna do crazy things.
“karma” (as reddit calls scoring) never was more true to its name. :)
I haven’t looked at Lemmy’s implementation of upvotes/downvotes, but they should be ActivityPub activities, so it means they should appear by making a request to the user’s actor.
EDIT: I’ve just checked random users outbox (that’s the ActivityPub name for the list of activities), included mine, they are actually just empty. So that probably means that Lemmy is only publishing the upvotes/downvotes when pushing activities to federated servers, which would make those activities way more private, although not completely : someone could setup their own instance to learn about them, and it’s best to be assume that at some point, someone will start such instance and publish an app revealing all votes for everybody (plus, as others mentioned, Kbin is already doing it).
Right.
My intuition says this has to do with kbin wanting to interface with mastodon, but I cant be sure.
I do wonder how this will impact the Fediverse as it grows. I would not be surprised if the feature creates schisms in the future.
Yeah agree I am not sure that’s a feature I’d want either tbh if it wasn’t already there. But seems like it is in some form.
Yeah, having it on your user page is much less dangerous, imo. Still a possibility of getting called out if you downvote someone you’re arguing with, but you’re already in the comments there.
The only way I see a problem is if someone writes a bot or extension that reads the user profile into something “per comment”, and if that gets enough traction and use to build up a strong database. However, in that case, I’d imagine the Lemmy devs would build a feature to let instance admins hide that information from regular users.
It’s part of the ActivityPub protocol. It’s inherent in the system unless you don’t want votes to register on anything but the local server.
Don’t vote if you aren’t willing to own your interactions. Stop being a troll.
It’s not being a troll, downvotes are part of the system for a reason: suppressing toxicity. If you downvote a toxic comment to push it down in the algorithm, there shouldn’t be a risk of that toxic person deciding they have a grudge and attacking you personally. Otherwise you risk downvotes not being used for their intended purpose, and an overall more toxic environment.
It absolutely is being a troll. If you aren’t willing to associate yourself with your participation, that’s the definition of a troll.
With anonymous downvotes, they are already weaponized and used to suppress topics. Having publicly available voting means you can block people who are toxic downvoters and/or hopefully ban those people/bots that do that.
Let me say this again so I can be perfectly clear: **If you are not willing to own your participation on a public forum, you should not be participating on that public forum. Go to a private one. **
The rise of online toxicity is a direct correlation with anonymity. What’s even more egregious about your stance is the fact that if you want to be anonymous and maintain your anonimity, it’s easy to do: use a throwaway account or otherwise anonymous account on yours or any other lemmy instance. There is absolutely NO valid reason to not have your voting history public in the Fediverse. The privacy crowd can make that happen by having throwaway accounts (which can be banned for being toxic, etc…) and people who want to have civilized discussions can have that by blocking/banning problem accounts. Taking away the public nature of your participation ONLY encourages toxic behavior and the ONLY people advocating for private voting are either trolls or people who don’t understand the problem.
I’m not sure I understand your position here, because voting is such a minor part of the system. A troll that only trolls by upvoting and downvoting isn’t much of a threat, unless they’ve got a dozen alt accounts or a botnet, both of which are different situations that should be handled differently. “The definition of a troll” is ridiculous hyperbole.
And as far as bans are concerned, that’s a moderation problem, not your role as an individual. I’ve never suggested votes should be completely untraceable, that’d be patently ridiculous and remove the ability to actually handle vote manipulation. Moderators and admins should obviously have that access, as I’ve asserted in this thread.
I’m also not advocating my votes be anonymous, I’m fine with having them public on my page. That alone gives you the complete ability to make a judgement about me as a person, or whatever it is you want to do with that. What I’m suggesting is that a user who’s just been downvoted shouldn’t have a trivial way of linking it to the individual who downvoted them in order to harass them.
Frankly, the impression I’m getting is that you’re not actually paying much attention to the case I’ve made, and are instead just using my comments as a platform to have a completely different argument that you’re passionate about. That’s the ONLY way that you could have missed my point so entirely, and come to the conclusion that I could ONLY be a troll or a moron.
When you interact online and refuse to own your interactions, that’s trolling. That’s what I mean when I say that. If you aren’t willing to own up to your interactions (particularly negative ones), then you are being a troll. Small, large, medium sized doesn’t matter… a troll is a troll and contributes, however minorly, to the toxicity of a given community.
And as far as bans are concerned, that’s a moderation problem, not your role as an individual. I’ve never suggested votes should be completely untraceable, that’d be patently ridiculous and remove the ability to actually handle vote manipulation. Moderators and admins should obviously have that access, as I’ve asserted in this thread.
As an admin of an instance, that just adds more work that should be handled between users, not moderators/admins. Traditionally yes it’s been handled by moderators/admins, and they get overloaded and become jaded. They can be biased (for or against you), they can just not care, etc… if we can move that moderation job off of the moderators and onto the users where they belong, we foster the independence and autonomy, as well as the accountability, that every individual should have. That way, if something isn’t going your way you know where to look for the source of the problem, instead of blaming biased moderators etc…
I’m also not advocating my votes be anonymous, I’m fine with having them public on my page. That alone gives you the complete ability to make a judgement about me as a person, or whatever it is you want to do with that. What I’m suggesting is that a user who’s just been downvoted shouldn’t have a trivial way of linking it to the individual who downvoted them in order to harass them.
Why not? If the down voter is a bad actor, why not give the user the ability to know who it is and block them? If the down voter is a white hat and legitimately voting down a subject, why do they need to hide behind anonymity? Anonymous downvotes only serves the bad actors. If you are not a bad actor and you want to participate in a community, you should be held accountable for your actions. This is not a “if you have nothing to hide scenario…” Let me provide an example:
Poster A posts something controversial that is completely against the norms of society, lets say they post that “groping women on the train should be allowed”
Poster B downvotes them because it’s obviously a stupid idea and deserves a downvote. No problem, right? It’s downvoted because it should be downvoted and if poster A wants to go after poster B (and everyone else who downvoted), as you said, one down voter isn’t going to be a problem.
Now, what if Poster A posts “Every human deserves the same basic rights, including trans people!” and poster B decides to downvote Poster A. Should Poster A not be able to identify who downvoted them and avoid them in the future?
If voting is “such a minor part of the system” what does it matter if it’s public or not or if someone “goes after” someone who downvoted them? The worst they can do is … down vote them harder?
If, however, it’s not such a minor part and is an important part, then we need accountability for who’s voting.
If it’s a vote brigade situation or downvote bot, the user being downvoted as the right to know WHO is doing it and block them if they so choose. Taking it to the logical extreme, if a given individual blocks everyone who downvotes them, they will eventually end up in an echo chamber of their own making and isolate themselves, either through blocking people or people blocking them. So it becomes a non-issue on it’s own.
Frankly, the impression I’m getting is that you’re not actually paying much attention to the case I’ve made, and are instead just using my comments as a platform to have a completely different argument that you’re passionate about. That’s the ONLY way that you could have missed my point so entirely, and come to the conclusion that I could ONLY be a troll or a moron.
What case have you made for private voting? I haven’t seen you make a case, other than “Voting should not be accessible to the general public” but you haven’t explained or demonstrated a scenario where the benefits of that (which are… what?) outweigh the negatives (trolling, brigading, bots, morons, etc)
Haha, well this aged like milk
It’s possible now if you visit the same page through kbin.
If you aren’t willing to own your interactions with people, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it? Why do you feel the need to hide? Thought processes like this are what leads to toxicity online. If you aren’t willing to own your comments and votes, you shouldn’t be allowed to interact with people in a community.
We call people that want to be negative online while remaining anonymous a troll. Don’t be a troll.
Oh, I know who upvotes me. It’s the awesome people.
And the people who downvote me are the people that suck.
Upvoting because I want to be an awesome person
You were awesome before you upvoted!
Me as well!
On Kbin, you can: https://kbin.social/m/asklemmy@lemmy.ml/t/329396/How-many-of-you-are-actually-chatbots/votes/down
On Lemmy, it’s
available on the APavailable in the database, so an admin instance can get that, but I don’t know of any client that offers the featurei don’t think it’s in the api. is in the DB, but not exposed anywhere. one instance admin could do query and see them.
Ah, that might be it, I didn’t remember exactly how it was working
What are downvotes seen by kbin users on lemmy content? It could just be the kbin instance’s local downvotes of the federated content but I never noticed a lack of down votes on lemmy-hosted content when I was running a personal kbin instance.
kbin doesn’t federate (in or out) downvotes. To the best of my knowledge lemmy doesn’t either. But, I’m not 100% on that.
deleted by creator
Well an upvote and downvote are counted entirely separate on kbin. There isn’t a deduction. So, you’ll just see the upvote count for federated content and only see the downvotes from local users.
deleted by creator
Pretty sure. I did some work on the favourites code (normal upvotes) recently and saw downvotes were stored separate (as vote) with no handler. Also someone else made a pull request to handle downvotes. Not implemented as of now.
Also the serious lack of downvotes on my instance.
Ahhh right so the information is there publicly available just not in the existing clients. Interesting.
Is that info federated or just the count? Might still be trivial to get the info if it’s the former.
It’s federated. Upvotes are just favorites in other platforms and they also show the user.
Don’t get your feelings hurt by fake internet points, m’dude.
If that becomes a thing i will stop voting on posts and comments.
you can but preserve your sanity and stay away from it
Not in the Lemmy UI or the standard API, no. The data is collected but not exposed to the web API or to clients.
Not all votes get federated, so you can only trust the posts on your home server.
You can see who up/downvoted this post in the database:
However, my database only contains the posts that I received/am subscribed to. These are the only posts my server thinks you upvoted:
Comments are counted separately, but I assume most of the stuff you upvoted isn’t on there. The lemmy.world admin can see all of your votes of course, but external users can’t query the votes (see https://lemmy.world/api/v3/post?id=3027601 for all the data available through the API).
So there are things you can do with this, but they’re I don’t think the people behind Lemmy care to make them available through the API. You should consider your votes to be public, but they’re not indexed by search engines.
I’ve considered writing the pettiest script on Lemmy (ban+purge everyone who downvotes you from the server) for shit and giggles, but I’d be afraid to publish it because I can see people actually use that non-ironically.
deleted by creator
That’s true, but I don’t think any search engines care about the Fediverse for the moment. There’s not a lot of money to be made on all of these ad-free websites. With the relatively small communities it’s also not a great source for stealing AI training data from.
Plus, the fact the content is mirrored all over the place probably triggers clone/bot detection, with clickable links to other Fediverse instances triggering the anti-bot measures.
A huge network of pages mostly linking to each other, all replicating each other’s contents, sounds like a textbook example of SEO abuse.
It would also open the door for rogue instances to send out massive downvote counts without any data to back that up. That’s not to say you couldn’t already do that with fake users, but it’s much easier to identify a mass of fake users than it is to identify a mass of fake downvotes as a number.
deleted by creator
No it wouldn’t, if the instances were creative with the data manipulation. I can think of at least 3 ways to do it right now
Also without identifying the user it becomes hard to know what’s a unique like and what is a duplicate. I suppose a workaround would be for the user’s instance to keep a record of who liked what, and then just issue just the unique like IDs (which can be traced back to the user only on their home instance).
It would need to be a bit smart. Say the same user toggles their upvote on and off. The upvote for a given topic I think would need to be a hash of the topic/comment ID + user ID so that the same ID would be re-issued to prevent the upvotes/cancels falling out of sync.
It’s a lot of effort really for keeping something such as a like private.
deleted by creator
What if the post is edited at a later time? Then all those votes become invalid. It’s not practical with the way ActivityPub is designed. Honestly, it’s designed the way it is for a reason… if you aren’t willing to own your participation on a public forum, you shouldn’t be on a public forum.
Why would editing do that? I was talking about using the ids which wouldn’t change on an edit.
In any case, I don’t have a problem with this info being federated. Some people do, so it’s worth talking about ways it could be done.
Because using a hash based on elements in the post would change on an edit is why I said that
I was suggesting (I actually clearly said it in both comments) hashing the post/comment ID + userid NOT the content. Just enough info to get a unique ID. We don’t need it not to be non-reversible. Just a unique ID for the like.
Open any post on KBin. Click the url, and add
/votes/down
. those are the people who downvoted that post.If the post is from Lemmy you can view “favourites” and “reduces” instead, just add
/favourites
or/reduces
to the end of the url.Enjoy :)
So, https://lemmy.ca/post/3102921/reduces for this post? Doesn’t seem to work?
You have to open the post from KBin, and it seems
/reduces
is wrong; it must be/votes/down
.Examples:
Upvotes:
https://kbin.social/m/fediverse@lemmy.world/t/329561/Is-is-possible-to-see-who-upvoted-downvoted-a-specific-comment/favourites
Downvotes:
https://kbin.social/m/fediverse@lemmy.world/t/329561/Is-is-possible-to-see-who-upvoted-downvoted-a-specific-comment/votes/down
Boosts:
https://kbin.social/m/fediverse@lemmy.world/t/329561/Is-is-possible-to-see-who-upvoted-downvoted-a-specific-comment/votes/up
Thanks! For my understanding, I’m guessing kbin can only see/display the votes that other kbin users have made in this link?
Doesn’t seem like it; I can see people from lemmy.world and other Lemmy instances too in the upvotes section.
Interesting, thanks!
I see yeah indeed that works! Although it looks like it only shows a subset of all votes.
You will only see local downvotes since, in general downvotes aren’t federated. Only upvotes.
deleted by creator
Aha, thanks for that. You’ll see elsewhere I said I wasn’t 100% sure about Lemmy. Kbin for sure only federates (in or out) upvotes currently. I was under the impression no-one was actually sending out the downvotes, even Lemmy.
Cool, thanks for the explanation. TIL
More -> Activity
Will also show the favorites and reduces for an ind post as well.
If votes are federated somebody could theoretically make a fork of Lemmy that will show who voted, but that instance has to federate with all other instances
No. It is impossible to tell.
People keep mentioning the kbin trick but it seems to show only the downvoters that are on kbin?
Upvotes are “favourites” on kbin.
Yes, but I’m talking about downvotes. It seems like you’ll only see those coming from kbin users.
You will only see them on the instance it happens too. If I downvote on my own instance it will only ever be seen as a downvote here. kbin doesn’t federate the downvotes in either direction. I’m happy to be corrected, but I don’t think lemmy does either.
deleted by creator
I thought that got fixed/changed very soon after the start of the migration?
I think what changed early on was that there wasn’t upvotes, only boost. When upvotes were added they went in as favourites.
I changed some code relating to a race condition with multiple consumer processes when a comment is like/unlike cycled and the messages come in together. I couldn’t find any code for that. Also there is a PR for adding this suggesting it didn’t exist before too.
Also the fact I don’t see downvotes on my own instance is another sign.
Well over on Reddit let them know that’s on kbin.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator