You Should Know

Obviously, this isn't ideal. But this isn't as damning as some of the other commenters believe.

The way reddit operates, is that they are "trusted" with all our data. They can (and do), sell any data they like, to whomever they like. They store much more information than simply who upvoted what. They can't simply allow upvotes with no claimant, they'd have no way of stopping or identifying bots or illegitimate upvotes.

This system is not ideal, but it's also not necessarily worse. We're still operating under that system, the only real difference is, we get to choose who that trusted party is. We get to move instances if the hosters interests become misaligned with our own.

Ultimately, there needs to be a smart solution to this problem to ensure it's not abused. We can't completely remove collection of the data, otherwise upvotes will be meaningless and hijacked by agendas. We can't simply encrypt the data, if there's a genuine use for it (which we've discussed), who SHOULD be allowed to decrypt it?

I completely understand the concern, and I share it. But this isn't an issue so much with Lemmy, it's an issue with upvotes on distributed social media.

Edit: Okay, ANY instance admin is where the issue lies. That much I agree with.

What about private messages? We should assume the person running the instance can read all private messages.

I think this is to be expected - some instances have downvotes disabled but that doesn't seem to be the rule of thumb.

There are quite a few questions about data retention, usage, retrieval, compliance and how it is shared which will need to be addressed as the platform grows.

Countdown for this to be monetised by someone.

I'm fine with it too. Don't think I'd be here if I wasn't okay with sharing these sort of things. If I wanted privacy for my upvotes or downvotes (why tho?), I'd do it anonymously.

And yeah, I upvoted the beans as well. Ate beans 90% of the time as a student. Still farting from it 20 years later.

I'd be really shocked if they recorded IP addresses as well.

So this is interesting... I thought only kbin visualized voting. Does this mean Lemmy's users are also tracked on kbin?

Good data if you're trying to find the homophobes and transphobes who think they're "infiltrating" and voting down every single one of those posts. They out themselves.