Edit: obligatory explanation (thanks mods for squaring me away)…

What you see via the UI isn’t “all that exists”. Unlike Reddit, where everything is a black box, there are a lot more eyeballs who can see “under the hood”. Any instance admin, proper or rogue, gets a ton of information that users won’t normally see. The attached example demonstrates that while users will only see upvote/downvote tallies, admins can see who actually performed those actions.

Edit: To clarify, not just YOUR instance admin gets this info. This is ANY instance admin across the Fediverse.

  • Serinus@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    clearly there should be ways to do it

    Your votes on Reddit are public to Reddit admins. On Lemmy anyone can be an admin.

    Giving vote totals without names makes the system ripe for fraud and abuse. In real life votes the decision to make votes public or private is a major one. In a system like Lemmy, the problems with private votes are exaggerated, and the problems with public votes are much smaller. Your Lemmy name shouldn’t be tied to your real name. It’s unlikely anyone is going to coerce your vote like they might coerce your political vote.

    If you’re concerned about anonymity, maybe use more than one name or a different name so that your account isn’t so easily tied back to you.

    The purpose behind having votes be more public is to have some kind of reputation behind those votes. It’s still possible to shill, but it requires more depth and and effort, and the shills may still be discovered if there are too many.