Question I'd like to hear everyone's thoughts on possibly making votes public. This has been discussed in a lot of other issues, but here's a dedicated one for discussion. Positives Could help figh...
Probably better to post in the github issue rather than replying here.
I think people misunderstand. I too would prefer privacy, but theres a big BUT.
Due to how the federation works, anyone who is tech savvy enough can already see votes. One way is to run an instance.
This change doesn’t lower privacy, it aligns expectations with reality. A false sense of privacy, which people obviously show here in the comments, is way more dangerous.
Except, if you’re using anything other than Lemmy at this point that information is already about. The Likes/Dislikes are considered public information by the protocol. Lemmy devs probably just didn’t get around to building out the UI for that before the Reddit APIcolypse.
How about you assume less? I spent 40+ minutes looking for this here, here, here and here and I’m already fairly familiar having done work on two other ActivityPub based projects.
In addition public-addressing (or the lack of use thereof) in no way claims to achieve what you’ve stated - which is probably why it’s not the answer to my query.
That would be great. I’m not sure how to solve the problems that arises though. If i can send an anonymous vote to an instance, what stops me from sending 100?
Maybe there’s some smart cryptographical solution here that alludes me, but it seems hard, if possible.
This is literally already a problem. I can easily set up an instance and write a simple bot which just spams votes with randomized user strings. There are generally a bunch of these functional vulnerabilities in the AP trust model which are only mitigated by the current lack of scale. Work needs to be put into reworking the trust model, not exposing user telemetry to even more people.
I think people misunderstand. I too would prefer privacy, but theres a big BUT.
Due to how the federation works, anyone who is tech savvy enough can already see votes. One way is to run an instance.
This change doesn’t lower privacy, it aligns expectations with reality. A false sense of privacy, which people obviously show here in the comments, is way more dangerous.
I accept if a dozen people can see my votes.
That’s not what you’re saying.
Ultimately I’m not invested in this decision. If the instance wants to watch people vote then people stop voting truly or at all.
Except, if you’re using anything other than Lemmy at this point that information is already about. The Likes/Dislikes are considered public information by the protocol. Lemmy devs probably just didn’t get around to building out the UI for that before the Reddit APIcolypse.
Lemmy actually marks votes as private for federation, but it seems that kbin/mbin ignore that.
Ahh, didn’t even know there was a flag for that. I don’t suppose you could link to the relevant w3c or FEP for it?
https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#public-addressing
Next time try reading the spec before asking.
How about you assume less? I spent 40+ minutes looking for this here, here, here and here and I’m already fairly familiar having done work on two other ActivityPub based projects.
In addition public-addressing (or the lack of use thereof) in no way claims to achieve what you’ve stated - which is probably why it’s not the answer to my query.
Right the standard is even more vague than I remember. Unfortunately it’s the only thing we have.
I read about that. In my opinion is that what should change, if possible. There are good reasons why votes a secret in democracies.
That would be great. I’m not sure how to solve the problems that arises though. If i can send an anonymous vote to an instance, what stops me from sending 100?
Maybe there’s some smart cryptographical solution here that alludes me, but it seems hard, if possible.
You could just hash your username+instance combo, right?
hmm, how would the receiving instance verify? what happens if I send 100 random hashes?
This is literally already a problem. I can easily set up an instance and write a simple bot which just spams votes with randomized user strings. There are generally a bunch of these functional vulnerabilities in the AP trust model which are only mitigated by the current lack of scale. Work needs to be put into reworking the trust model, not exposing user telemetry to even more people.