this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2024
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Mander

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Viewing votes (mander.xyz)
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Hello all!

As of yesterday, I have updated the the instance to 0.19.2-rc.5. This should fix some of the remaining federation problem.

This morning it was brought to my attention through the Matrix chat that a feature has been added to the UI to allow admins to view votes: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/pull/2303

I would like to add a bit of context. Viewing votes has always been possible in at least two ways:

  • Since votes are stored in the database, admins with access to the database have always been able to retrieve the list of voters by running a postgres database query.

  • Some applications in the fediverse will display votes by default. For example, content federated with friendica displays the votes as "likes/dislikes", so any user can see federated votes.

What this feature has changed is that admins, regardless of whether they have access to the server, are able to see the list of up-votes/down-votes through the user interface.

This is effectively making a "hidden" admin feature more transparent. This can also help admins easily identify if bots are being used to mass down-vote.

I am bringing this up explicitly here because I think users might be interested in knowing if their votes can be seen, and so I want to be transparent about this change and about votes in general.

I also have some thoughts that I would like to discuss. If users are uncomfortable with admins having this power, I could remove this feature from this instance. But that would only be symbolic, as the votes can always be retrieved from the database anyway - and other instance admins will still have this feature to see federated votes.

I can also keep it this way. Only admins can see votes, and I can simply not abuse that power.

I can enable this feature for every user. Then everyone can see everyone's votes.

Another option is to disable down-votes altogether.

If anyone has any thoughts/opinions about this, please let me know. I'm curious and interested in finding a good way to handle this.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Tell me if I’m wrong – since votes are federated, anyone who’s tech-savvy / motivated enough can always expose the identity of who upvoted or downvoted things anyway. No?

I think that the easiest way is to create an instance and collect votes.

But, as far as I can tell, It is not possible to retrieve the votes that were cast before the instance was created. The votes only get sent out to the subscribed instances at the time of voting. If you pull a comment or post later, it will arrive with 0 votes.

Maybe publicizing voting and making sure people know voting is public would be better (esp if it’s already exposed to all end-users through Friendica). I could see a few different ways it could lead to problems if people assume it’s private information when it’s really not.

I think so too. I have already been part of a few conversations with users who have just discovered that this is possible. I think that this transparency is something that the feature wants to achieve, but it is important to publicize it to avoid surprises.

I can include this information in the instance's application, then at least new users would be informed.