Twitter really isn’t that much better. I remember when Twitter first started and it was getting a lot of crap for its weird name and that you made tweets. It count on eventually, but it’s going to take constant exposure.

Again, please stop saying this removes protections for trans/gay.

What do you mean, again? You mean, for the first time? Because either you forgot you never said it or you’re trying to gaslight. I can’t read your mind. You don’t control me, nor anyone else. And do you want me to stop bringing it up because it’s hurting your argument? Should I throw in there too, there’s countries were you can be put to death for being Atheist? Or speaking out against the government. Why is it important for you to out these people or not consider them, because it very much seems like it’s one or the other. Why are you very much against increasing user security/privacy?

That information is already public

It’s sort of public, with steps. It should be, not public.

The blocking scenario is what happens now, you just wouldn’t know they made a new account unless you’re actually able to see it…

Are you new to the internet? That’s not how any of this would work. And I brought games in as an example, hoping to give an example you’d understand, clearly it didn’t.

If votes don’t matter now why not change it to a form where they do matter

Why should they matter? Why do you very clearly want to see what and how everyone votes? Are we going to implement social scores? If you’re upvote count isn’t high enough and your ration isn’t good enough,… hold on wasn’t there a Black Mirror episode with this exact premise?

So, if someone downvotes something, you expect them to defend it… but a simple upvote is perfectly acceptable. Just no, that’s never going to happen. Congrats you re-invented Facebook. Only upvotes and no counter feedback.

I’m genuinely lost as to why you’re not in favor if increasing security for users. I mean, I’ve given some simple examples but there’s honestly way more reasons why we don’t need everyone able to track everyone, to be able to stalk/harass everyone. And “banning” someone will do nothing since anyone who knows that’s a possibility, will just have a shadow account to monitor you.

Agreed. I’ve never liked that it’s already as public as it is. I remember when Lemmy was taking off and there was a discussion and to me it seemed like people were in favor of Lemmy stepping up user security, but seems that never happened. If user security isn’t critical, than the Fediverse is a complete failure and should NOT be used by anyone for any reason.

In my line of work, you need to plan and explore the extremes, else you haven’t planned and covered for everything.

So, going back to my example, say someone is trans/gay, if they can’t safely post/vote then they’re just effectively silenced. And there’s certain parts of the world where that freedom of expression might be very important to them. To safely and freely be themselves w/o worry of punishment. Making it easier to see just makes it easier for them to be discovered. Or when someone is put to death because they spoke out against something… are we going to start posting “We did it Lemmy!”.

Blocking them… means I know for certain it was someone. If I get a few downvotes right now, I can brush it off as random people. But once a name is attached, that’s when it’s going to escalate. And blocking them isn’t going to stop someone. They can just start a new account and continue and for some people, getting blocked is 100% just going to do that. We know this. Video games have been banning people for decades and that literally doesn’t stop them. Right now, votes don’t matter. If we remove that, votes will matter. And again, it’s not going to drive engagement like you think it is, let alone honest engagement. Have you left a response to every vote you’ve ever done explaining in detail why you voted that way in regards to something? If not, you’ve already failed your own ideals.

I personally think it should be locked down and votes should be kept under a very tight lock and key.

I posted this already as a response, so I’ll sort of post it here. If we start mapping users to their IRL selves, and agencies can start capturing what someone votes on, you have a few problems. 1) Marketing agencies selling your data again. 2) Governments can start using someones posts against them. You’re might not, but there are several that will. And Lemmy is a global platform.

I’m having trouble seeing how downvotes being public would lead to more harassment.

It’s not just downvotes. Upvotes could be used as well.

You would have to make sure you’re comfortable with putting your opinion forward just like with commenting.

That works unless your opinion is the minority. What if there’s someone’s gay in say a location that might put them to death for being gay. And now they can’t even upvote/downvote safely because any action they take could be used against them. Swap out gay for any really where people can be punished IRL for something online.

If there’s someone going around downvoting someone relentlessly it will be brought to light for all to see, not hidden like it is now.

To what end? What benefit does that bring other then further harassment/bullying? If I actively know someone is downvoting me because I said Batman sucks and they decided to go through my entire post history to downvote everything, what, if anything should the response be? Do we form up a council to start handing out punishment and review cases?

That would encourage more people to speak up because their detractors would have to do so publicly and without explanation they seem like they’re not bringing anything to the table in the discussion

There’s a huge disconnect already from view count, posts/replies, and votes. If you’re going to require that a vote must come with an explanation… you’re going to see engagement drop to 0. This really sounds like the “if you have nothing to hide” that’s thrown around on why governments/police feel the need to pry into everything. Which you might agree with, but I very much don’t. And frankly, I don’t think it’s going to encourage more people to speak up, simply because people just don’t have the time. It’s easy for a person to just upvote/downvote something without saying something, especially if they have nothing to add.

Exactly. We need counter views. One of the problems with any type of social media has been echo chambers and the lack of healthy debate/conversation. People have forgotten how to have a civil debate/conversation with someone else. And people tend to act like, if you don’t 100% agree with me, than not only can we not be friends, but you’re actively an enemy. That shouldn’t be the case. We do not need everyone to agree on everything, it should be acceptable to have a different opinion.

With everything public, we’re going to have no healthy conversation since people will use previous votes (up or down) against someone. One of the issues is, an up/down vote by itself doesn’t give much insight into anything. It’s not like the vote itself is quantified. We already see people try this with digging into post history to make assumptions of someone and bring it up as “evidence”.

I think it’s a bad idea. It’s just going to start harassment and witch hunts when someone gets a downvote they don’t like. Stalking is going to be a thing, people are going to aggregate all the votes you’ve done to make assumptions about you to then bully you. Once public, sources outside Lemmy will start gathering and cross referencing data about you.

In the US, when you vote, the vote is private to protect the person. Making votes public will only empower those that would abuse it. It very well could end Lemmy due to massive bulling, harassment, and the decline of activity.

This is like, reason #73 why I should definitely NOT get a bread maker. I lack the will power…