this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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I'm just looking to understand the benefits of completely transparent public voting so I can weigh them against the downsides. That's how I like to form - or change - opinions.
Saying that trying to hide voting data is meaningless because it's impossible to hide completely anyway does not answer why public votes are good, it just tries to invalidate the question.
I'm looking for the completion of the sentence "I like that everyone is able to see who up/downvotes them because __"
Let's say I browse a news or politics related community on /New. Someone publishes an incendiary post that nevertheless skirts the rules such that it isn't within the grounds to report. I downvote it because it's not the type of content I want on that community. That person spends a single mouseclick to find me and sends me a hostile DM and/or goes and retaliation-downvotes everything on my profile. It's not a difficult situation to imagine.
You can't hand wave away the technical limitations like that. If you want downvotes, and you appear to want them, and you want to be on a federated system, and it appears you do, then the federation will require linking downvotes to users.
Downvotes aren't an outwardly anonymous way to show disagreement like they were used on Reddit. They're like a comment of disagreement. If someone harasses you for downvotes, report them. And block them. Just as you would if they did so for a comment you left.
I like that voting is public because it makes voting (up or down) a public statement. If I look at a person's voting history and see upvotes on racist comments and downvotes of well thought out comments I can know with some certainty that I can disregard the opinions of that person. Further, it might make people more thoughtful about what they vote on.
Well yes. They can still be made more or less easily accessible.
That's what I was looking for, thank you. I can definitely understand that perspective.
I definitely hope I'm wrong and this won't be an issue as Kbin grows its user base.
Only on a server by server basis. The data is being transmitted and received. If a server decides to hide that info, that doesn't necessarily mean that other ActivityPub compatible services will also hide it, let alone services running the same software.
You just need to get used to the idea that a vote is as much a pubic statement as a comment, and act accordingly.