As it was recently discussed a lot of the data you generate while using the fediverse is public. If we’re looking at the threadiverse even more of it is public including your votes.

I only know the specifics of Mastodon and mbin, so maybe @rimu@piefed.social @nutomic@lemmy.ml @julian@community.nodebb.org and other devs can chime in here.

Voting on Mastodon is a lot more private than voting in the threadiverse. Only the author of a post (and their instance) knows everyone who voted on a post. Everybody else can retrieve the total numbers, but not the individual votes. Of course this comes with the downside that everyone else has to fetch this data and while the instance could send an Update activity - informing other instances that the numbers changed - Mastodon currently does not do that.
In the threadiverse on the other hand, every single vote gets send around the network, including all the details.

I would like the threadiverse software to get a bit better at privacy. Mastodon is often restrictive with activities for that exact reason and while I do not want to completely screw visibility by not sending anything to anyone, I think the visibility of votes can be improved a lot.

So my proposal would be: votes are only sent to the author of a post. The author then sends an Update activity to their followers and the magazine the post belongs to. The magazine then announces this Update activity to all its subscribers. The post object has to contain the relevant numbers of course and Mastodon and PeerTube use shares, likes and dislikes (PeerTube only). These properties then contain a Collection with a property called totalItems and not a list of the people who actually voted, that would defeat the purpose (looking at you PeerTube)

Because nobody wants to break federation with other software, it would be nice if this could be coordinated between all the threadiverse actors

  • Rimu@piefed.socialEnglish
    3·
    22 hours ago

    Ah that is interesting, I missed that the first time.

    So the author instance would be responsible for federating activities, not the instance hosting the community? That could be very beneficial for spreading load across the network! But maybe it would complicate moderation because the author could ignore moderator’s commands to delete the post and stop federating it.

    • BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.deOP
      1·
      22 hours ago

      Only regarding to votes, but yes. So only the author receives votes and then distributes the update activities containing the new vote counts to the group and the author’s followers. I totally see the potential for abuse, I don’t if that potential is to big or if it is negligible… Mastodon seems to think it is fine…

      • General_Effort@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        20 hours ago

        Mastodon is built around individual posters. When you interact with a post, you interact with the author. Lemmy is built around “communities” (discussions forums) and individual threads/topics. Having multiple different servers handle the voting for a single thread makes much less sense.

        The obvious problem is that the author/their instance has a vested interest in up/down votes.

        To me votes are a way to signal to others if they should bother reading something. I’m not quite sure how that works on Mastodon. I don’t think likes influence visibility outside the home instance?

        The author is interested in getting their message out. Think about someone trying to sell stuff, for example. They would want to manipulate the visibility/apparent popularity of a post. Such a party would also be most interested in the identities of supporters/detractors.

        If you wanted to create psychological profiles, you could create bait messages and observe the reactions. That would be much more effort, but if that is a concern, then that probably isn’t good enough.

        • BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.deOP
          1·
          20 hours ago

          The obvious problem is that the author/their instance has a vested interest in up/down votes. […] The author is interested in getting their message out. Think about someone trying to sell stuff, for example. They would want to manipulate the visibility/apparent popularity of a post. Such a party would also be most interested in the identities of supporters/detractors.

          That is the same on every social media platform, including Mastodon

          I don’t think likes influence visibility outside the home instance?

          Likes don’t affect that at all, boosts or shares or retweets or whatever they are called affect that and are sent to the author and your followers

          If you wanted to create psychological profiles, you could create bait messages and observe the reactions. That would be much more effort, but if that is a concern, then that probably isn’t good enough.

          At the moment this is very easily achievable in the threadiverse. You just sub to a community and you get everything you need from that community. With my proposal this would be much harder to achieve, as you’d only get the information from people interacting with you, or, if we’d shift it to the community actor, you’d have to control the instance of the community. Sure still possible (it always will be) but a lot harder

    • s81422379@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      22 hours ago

      Hi, Can you please reply to me via email? My real full name has been displayed via your mod log on Lemmy.world. I am respectfully requesting you to either remove or block this post from the public views.

        • s81422379@lemmy.worldEnglish
          11·
          22 hours ago

          Hello,

          @rimu@piefed.social

          Unfortunately, I cannot change the display name of account as it won’t let me log into piefed.social. It says, “Account registrations are currently closed.” Can you remove contents from the mod log on Lemmy.world? If it is an instance you can access and moderate, let me know. Reply back to me here or send a private message once you have removed my full name or the entire post from the mods log of Lemmy.world.

          Thank you.

          Nora P.

          • mathemachristian [he/him]@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
            1·
            19 hours ago

            rimu didn’t read your post correctly, changing your display name to match your real name is not necessary or advisable, likewise signing public comments (you can edit them by clicking on the pen button).

            Since the offending comment is made from a user on the anarchist.nexus server I have asked one of the admins there (unruffled) on your behalf, I hope that was ok. I think they can “purge” the comment, meaning they can delete it in such a way that every other server it got sent to receives a notification to delete it as well.

            • s81422379@lemmy.worldEnglish
              11·
              18 hours ago

              Hi,

              Thank you for contacting one of their admins on my behalf. I honestly hope they can either remove my full name or the entire post. But unfortunately my name still turns up on the link I provided @rimu@piefed.social with. Of course I would like anarchist.nexus to come back to once they have already deleted this name and if is disappeared from Lemmy.world and other servers. Can you also inform @db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com. He was able to delete this copy from their instance only and I think he might be able to help as he is likely to moderate the website of anarchist.nexus too. @unruffled@anarchist.nexus can also contact me if this comment has been purged.

                • s81422379@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  11·
                  18 hours ago

                  I honestly hope they will take this comment down. As I had said, my full name is still presented to the public but I don’t wish it to remain visible there. Can you also ask @db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com Of course @unruffled@anarchist.nexus can also reply back to me once this post has been erased. Unfortunately the final outcome of this case is not entirely up to me but Lemmy world and anarchist.nexus admins as they have that power to handle such requests. But I am willing to work closely with them to have this matter fully resolved.