As for now, upvotes, downvotes and boosts are public on kbin
On every thread or post, if you click on more and activity, you'll get the info.
I personally find this to be a good things, I've seen people using downvote way too easily. I like the idea that we need to be somehow accountable for those mechanism.
edit: It could be somehow improved to have an option to let this info only available between concerned users.
edit edit: I think that up/downvote info shouldn't be public, but kept private between the users involved. we need to address this privacy issue.
Hard disagree on the idea that upvote/downvote history being displayed constantly is a good thing - it seems like it's just inviting harassment. Should be opt-out at a minimum, and preferably opt-in.
There's also potential for harassment due to people seeing opposing political opinions. As an example - My wife was once the target of harassment by a number of users on Reddit for days for warning people about an anti-abortion protest that was displaying graphic imagery. Much easier for those kind of people to coordinate harassment of others if they can easily see records of upvoting pro-choice or downvoting anti-choice posts/comments.
I understand what you're saying, but in the broader scheme of the internet we should have the ability to dictate what of our data and actions get broadcast and therefore able to be mined by advertisers or other nefarious entities. This is actually a hugely important idea in fighting the corporatization of the internet. We need to stop letting mega corps build profiles on us based on our clicks.
I still don't really understand what your dissatisfied with. You said something about people downvoting too much? Say you see someone who is downvoting in a way you don't like. What is your recourse? Why do you want that information?
You have a pretty ironclad point. A company having access to years of that from any user would be a huge boon. Which is upsetting, because I viewed it as a helpful development in terms of group dynamics. Not for blacklisting purposes, which they also run the risk of turning into, but because, knowing your name is up there, you're more likely to mull over whether something is really actually bad enough to deserve the downvote and throwing them around willy-nilly is a great habit to break yourself of.
If you can't downvote something without being called out by name, you're stuck admitting it really didn't matter all that much, or hopefully explaining why you dislike something in words. Which does not happen nearly as often as it should. Forcing people to own up to them could curb the tendency to downvote things into oblivion
Thinking it over, I'm forced to admit the cons outweigh it, but I don't have to like it.
A company having access to years of that from any user would be a huge boon.
This could be said for any bit of information you post publicly. You don't think they can learn the same info from your posts? I agree it is a problem but I don't think private up/down votes address it.
Some people don't understand the implications of making the votes public.
Any tool like "Kbin enhancement suite" will quickly scan for who downvoted you and will allow you to track the person who disrespected you by downvoting you. It won't be "micro-harassement", it will be wide scale, automated harassment, systematic retaliation. An active hate list, basically. Imagine the equivalent of a "the_donald" centralizing a database of the people to downvote or harass based on their public vote.
I think the best course of action is to no vote at all as long as the votes are not secret.
Public voting is inherent in how the fediverse is structured, it's impossible for it to both allow upvotes/downvotes and also keep those votes secret. A particular instance could hide them from the interface but any other instance that was federated with it would be able to see them anyway so if you're worried about stalkers then that's not going to change anything.
About the only way I could think of do "solve" this would be to use a pretty sophisticated cryptography technique called zero-knowledge proofs, and given how many people are already having problems with the complexities of federation that's probably not a good path to follow right now.
I had a friend once who was seemingly unaware that Instagram made all his likes public. It was entertaining enough, but maybe not ideal from his perspective. It felt like I ended up knowing him a little better than I really wanted to.
Hmm, yeah, I don't like this at all. I can see some benefits but I really don't want to have to worry about what I'm voting on. If I downvote some lunatic I don't want them being able to harass me about it. And it feels way too social-media-y for me. This could be a dealbreaker for a lot of people if there isn't at least a way to opt out.
I agree on all points especially about the social media feel. I don't want instagram or facebook where it shows so and so liked/disliked/reacted to something.
I think this forces something that nobody paid attention to in Reddiquete, which was that if you don't like something, you just shouldn't vote on it. Downvotes were supposed to be for when something actively didn't belong, not just something you didn't agree with. Of course, another way to do that would be to just get rid of the Reduce button entirely.
@jake_eric I see the opposite. Making votes and especially downvotes private facilitates a kind of micro-harassement by individuals or organized groups.
I see where you're coming from, but on the flip side, I think it empowers the bad-faith trolls who have way too much time and energy to get into fights. On Reddit, if I see someone just being a general asshole, I'll downvote and move on. If that person can see that I've done that, I'm not gonna feel as comfortable doing that, lest they retaliate somehow.
You could turn it around and say that it empowers non-asshole users to fight back as well, but the assholes tend to have more energy to get into fights, that's part of the reason why they're being assholes online in the first place.
I can tell you I've absolutely never wished Reddit votes were shared knowledge. Even if it would occasionally be useful information, it's just not worth it for me.
The fediverse is always ahead on things like moderation, so I don't forsee downvote harassers becoming a thing here. Eventually, you'll be able to easily block/report/ban them.
I'm not even sure allowing an opt out would be technically feasible without some big work. Your votes have to be sent to other servers to keep counts consistent and you can't control whether that server shows or hides votes. So any option you set on your own instance won't have an effect outside your instance.
Apart from the issue of harassers, I don't see a good reason for hiding votes. Showing votes might help prevent brigades or similar vote harassment (e.g. user always downvotes another user they don't like).
I'm still figuring out how this works. Does Lemmy also make your votes public? It doesn't seem to me like it does (though I may be wrong) and that's part of the fediverse too, no?
I think it's a good thing to show the person behind the downvote based on the principles of transparency and sharing information freely. If corporations will take advantage of that data, they are the problem and the solution should reflect that.
If a person wants to participate in the discussion by either commenting or voting, they shouldn't be doing it behind a veil of anonymity.
Its fediverse. The only way to verify upvotes and downvotes and limit them to 1 per user is for there to be a record. The only way to avoid that situation is to not Federate upvotes/downvotes.
Being concerned about boosts is literally a misunderstanding of what a boost is. The purpose of a boost is to mimic retweet functionality. It's to share that same thing with all of your followers. It would serve no purpose if it weren't public.
One platform can hide them, but others would still be able to see them so someone with bad intentions could still just look it up somewhere else
Oof. It feels like every new social media platform insists on replicating the mistakes of their predecessors. You'd think by now there would be an established body of design patterns for social media. This looks like it might be relevant, even though it's quite old now.
edit: it's also interesting that only downvotes count for "reputation points", so anyone who raises their heads above the parapet in a contentious thread is at risk of instantly having a negative reputation [edit 2: QED]. I have no idea what effect that will have though...
kbin does let you hide your own followings and magazine subscriptions, so my guess is it wouldn't be hard to implement hiding your up/downvotes. Ernest the developer is almost certainly more concerned with handling site traffic and stability first, but you could always add an Issue to the bug tracker.