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.

  • SalamanderOPMA
    2•4 months ago

    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.

    • mozz
      5•4 months ago

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

      Or even just make a little tool “hey I wanna stalk this (political / porn / whatever) community, run an endpoint for me that’s subscribed to it and give me a little report of who all is upvoting stuff in it”.

      I sort of assumed that the process that downloads a community’s history when it’s first federated also includes the identity of all the past votes (I feel like it has to be that way in order to make sure we’re not double-counting votes during federation?), but that’s just uneducated guessing.

      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.

      Honestly I think that for new users the upvote / downvote buttons should literally pop up a message on every vote that says, “Hey! Due to the nature of the fediverse your upvotes and downvotes are semi-public information!” until you check the box that says “don’t show me again.”

      Personally for me I don’t have a problem with people being aware of my votes, but that’s partly because I assume it’s semi-public knowledge in the first place. I feel like enough people are unaware that taking too close a look at votes might be a privacy issue, but really the issue is the unawareness, not the looking.

      • SalamanderOPMA
        2•4 months ago

        I sort of assumed that the process that downloads a community’s history when it’s first federated also includes the identity of all the past votes (I feel like it has to be that way in order to make sure we’re not double-counting votes during federation?), but that’s just uneducated guessing.

        What happens is that the content arrives with 0 votes. There is no double voting, votes are just lost. The instance only sends out “user #X up-voted comment #Y” at the moment when the button is clicked. The list of votes does not get sent when a community is federated.

        Honestly I think that for new users the upvote / downvote buttons should literally pop up a message on every vote that says, “Hey! Due to the nature of the fediverse your upvotes and downvotes are semi-public information!” until you check the box that says “don’t show me again.”

        That’s a very good idea!

        • mozz
          3•4 months ago

          What happens is that the content arrives with 0 votes.

          With Mastodon and Kbin I think you’re right, but I thought Lemmy deliberately went back and populated it all. I literally just federated https://lemmy.world/c/callofcthulhu@ttrpg.network to test (it wasn’t on lemmy.world until I searched it) and it arrived with all the right scores. IDK if that means vote identities go over though.

          (Edit: Oh, did you just mean scores were federated correctly but votes were lost? That would make sense yeah.)

          That’s a very good idea!

          Yeah! I think so. It might be worth a post to a wider swathe of the community.

          • SalamanderOPMA
            3•4 months ago

            I literally just federated https://lemmy.world/c/callofcthulhu@ttrpg.network to test

            I checked the votes of the most recent post and I do see votes from lemmy.world, so it was already federating!

            I also tested just now and I no longer see “0” votes, I do see a single vote (from the original poster). So that did change, but the score remains “1”. You can see:

            https://mander.xyz/c/onewheel@lemmy.world

            https://lemmy.world/c/onewheel

            Yeah! I think so. It might be worth a post to a wider swathe of the community.

            Since I am not confident I can code this myself, at least not quickly, I think it is better if I make a GitHub issue for it.

            • mozz
              2•4 months ago

              I checked the votes of the most recent post and I do see votes from lemmy.world, so it was already federating!

              I also tested just now and I no longer see “0” votes, I do see a single vote (from the original poster). So that did change, but the score remains “1”. You can see:

              https://mander.xyz/c/onewheel@lemmy.world

              https://lemmy.world/c/onewheel

              That’s so weird. In your example it’s clearly working the way you say, but I could swear I’ve seen it auto-populate a new community including scores. IDK, maybe I am wrong; I might do some testing on creating-for-this-testing communities just to investigate more.

              Since I am not confident I can code this myself, at least not quickly, I think it is better if I make a GitHub issue for it.

              That’s awesome. Yeah, I think this would be a good thing. I asked about doing the same for mbin since I may be switching to it, but having it in all similar-to-Reddit platforms seems to me like it’d be a good thing.