this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2024
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Not only admins can see the votes, but anyone on Fediverse (except regular Lemmy users) can see them.
Security through obscurity is prone to failure when it is used by itself. If people want their votes to actually be private then another method of securing their privacy should be created.
We aren't talking about security though. We're talking about what information should be presented on lemmy.
Let me put it this way: have you personally ever tried to see who upvoted or downvoted a particular lemmy post? And if you did, did you talk about what you saw?
My point is that currently basically no one sees the data. The expectation is that no one is looking. And it is not socially acceptable to discuss who is voting for what. But if the votes were changed to public then everyone would see it, the expectation would be that it is common knowledge, and so obviously it will be discussed. Is that what we want on lemmy?
Your first comment expands on both privacy and security. There is no privacy without some type of security.
Now to answer your questions: Yes and yes. Users from c/all were downvoting posts from a small community I'm a part of because they don't agree with. I couldn't see the posts from small communities that are important to me because of that. Now we have the possibility to sort by "scaled", which fixes that. Sometimes there are discussions that are very relevant as to who is voting for what. But that discussion has nothing to do with privacy, which was your first point and went unacknowledged on your second comment.
I sure don't, let the mods see it for their communities but not for everyone
But this isn't security! No one is claiming that not making vote history visible through the UI is a means to keep things secure!