I woke up today, to a public comment in a Lemmy community asking a series of tagged accounts why they had downvoted certain posts

I thought that reactions to posts and comments are anonymous and now I don’t really know what to feel about Lemmy any more.

In this case I had downvoted a poster because of its design, but was confronted publicly for being racist because the person assumed that I downvoted the message on the poster

EDIT: changed the title from “How” to “Why” because it broke rule nr 5 about it being a support question

  • RedstoneValley@sh.itjust.works
    442·
    24 days ago

    Not the OP, but i find it concerning because this enables creating a very detailed profile of a users interests, political alignment, medical issues, sexual orientation etc. Even if they never post anything! We should all know by now that there are bad actors actively using this kind of data in the worst ways imaginable. In the US this can already have life threatening consequences (ICE raids etc…)

    This is not a good privacy oriented design and it exposes users in a dangerous way.

    EDIT: About lemvotes.org. I like this site because it makes it obvious how dangerous this really is. For example I accidentally upvoted a really disgusting NSFW post misclicking on my phone. This will forever be visible to the world. I’m a documented pervert now. Good job.

    • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
      185·
      24 days ago

      i find it concerning because this enables creating a very detailed profile of a users interests, political alignment, medical issues, sexual orientation etc. Even if they never post anything!

      So don’t interact. What you read isn’t stored, but if you interact, it should be public.

      For example I accidentally upvoted a really disgusting NSFW post misclicking on my phone.

      I agree that it’s dumb you don’t have a “my votes” page where you can remove that. But you can go to said post and just remove your vote.

      • Geth@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        13·
        24 days ago

        So in a niche community we are now promoting that people don’t interact with said community if they care about their privacy at all?

        • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
          8·
          24 days ago

          Not at all. I’m saying you should interact and stand behind your interactions.

          For example, you downvoted my post, which is fine. You also replied, which is also fine. Why is it bad that one isn’t on your profile (but it is public) and the other is openly visible in a list on your profile?

          Interactions are by default public, otherwise there’s no point to interacting. I’d go one further and say that having the voting information public but not visible by default is by far the worst option.

    • MagicShel@lemmy.zipEnglish
      9·
      24 days ago

      I constantly misvote by doing a gesture not exactly right on my phone. I wouldn’t judge anyone by their votes.

    • CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works
      6·
      23 days ago

      Someone can spin up an instance and have votes federated to them anyway, so regardless of whether lemvotes exists or not, people can harvest your information.