this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2024
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Private voting has been added to PieFed (piefed.social)
submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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We had a really interesting discussion yesterday about voting on Lemmy/PieFed/Mbin and whether they should be private or not, whether they are already public and to what degree, if another way was possible. There was a widely held belief that votes should be private yet it was repeatedly pointed out that a quick visit to an Mbin instance was enough to see all the upvotes and that Lemmy admins already have a quick and easy UI for upvotes and downvotes (with predictable results ). Some thought that using ActivityPub automatically means any privacy is impossible (spoiler: it doesn't).

As a response, I’m trying this out: PieFed accounts now have two profiles within them - one used for posting content and another (with no name, profile photo or bio, etc) for voting. PieFed federates content using the main profile most of the time but when sending votes to Mbin and Lemmy it uses the anonymous profile. The anonymous profile cannot be associated with its controlling account by anyone other than your PieFed instance admin(s). There is one and only one anonymous profile per account so it will still be possible to analyze voting patterns for abuse or manipulation.

ActivityPub geeks: the anonymous profile is a separate Actor with a different url. The Activity for the vote has its “actor” field set to the anonymous Actor url instead of the main Actor. PieFed provides all the usual url endpoints, WebFinger, etc for both actors but only provides user-provided PII for the main one.

That’s all it is. Pretty simple, really.

To enable the anonymous profile, go to https://piefed.social/user/settings and tick the ‘Vote privately’ checkbox. If you make a new account now it will have this ticked already.

This will be a bit controversial, for some. I’ll be listening to your feedback and here to answer any questions. Remember this is just an experiment which could be removed if it turns out to make things worse rather than better. I've done my best to think through the implications and side-effects but there could be things I missed. Let's see how it goes.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

Oh god.....I'm Charlie Kelly.

I read that as "Pirate voting".

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

I love this approach, balances user freedom & privacy with moderation & voting pattern analysis by the public.

ActivityPub might mean some data is slightly less private, but that doesn't mean it has to be.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

That's super cool and amazing that you implemented it so quickly.

So now I have a PieFed account :)

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago

Awesome! This is the exact stopgap implementation I was arguing for, and I'm surprised how many people kept insisting it was impossible. You should try and get this integrated into mainline Lemmy asap. Definitely joining piefed in the meantime though.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

How does this work with moderation? I.e. what happens if I ban the real user from a Lemmy instance? What if I ban the alternate user?

Also, what happens if on Piefed, a user votes for something, then they change the setting and then they vote for the same thing again? How would a Lemmy instance know if it should count the vote or not, since the original user didn't actually vote from Lemmy's point of view?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The 'real user' and the 'private voter' are 2 different accounts as far a external instances are concerned, but only 1 as far as piefed.social is concerned. So if you banned either one, it would have the same effect, because PF would locate the same account from the information provided.

Likewise, a piefed user can't vote twice on something, they make one vote, and then the 'private voting' setting determines how it is sent out. The local system has tracked that they have voted, and changing the setting won't change that.

There's always more work to do of course, but piefed.social is a small instance, with manual approval required for registration, no API to script things like mass downvoting, and concepts such as 'attitude' which would prevent that anyway, so I can't foresee anything too disastrous happening from this little experiment.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I'm a little concerned about the precedent this sets. An instance could use this technique to facilitate anonymous commenting or posting in addition to votes.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago

Who cares? Generating an infinite number of tokenized identities to facilitate ban evasion will just result in an instance getting defederated. This introduces no real risk as long as the instance is generally abiding by the rules.

Most of us here are fairly anonymous anyway. I dont think being able to add an additional layer of privacy to our activity is really a big deal.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

I actually had an idea that this could be a solution, is just have votes appear from fake accounts. Glad someone implemented it!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Its strange to see one of my posts being used as a reference. All I was trying to do was share something cool.

I do agree though. When up/downvotes (especially downvotes) are fully public, it leads to trolls getting angry and lashing out on individuals in a semi-public way. And if you can see ALL of that individuals voting patterns, then we get people strategically making tools to go after people that vote certain ways. Theres a reason anonymous voting is a thing outside of the internet as well.

If this goes live in lemmy.world i will be looking at other places to post/interact with. Love lemmy (and contributed to the codebase as a dev) but I cant be bothered with trolls.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

It's vice versa. In the old good times there was a saying "don't feed the troll". Just block him. Downvoting is just a cheap solution for people who cannot justify their argument. Btw, I love to read downvoted comments which are by default 'hidden'. Most of them are trash but sometimes it's a valid point but not the very popular one

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I'm not sure what you are suggesting. Are you suggesting never using downvotes?

[–] [email protected] -2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

Yes, exactly my thoughts on this. Downvoting is only a measure of crowd censorship based on opinion popularity. If you see some trolls, just block them but don't hide their posts for other ones who may think on that person views otherwise

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Downvotes are part of the whole curation aspect of the site, and it's a valid part of the democratic system. For all the whining about being "censored" because you got downvoted, there's countless cases where downvotes influence the sorting algorithm positively.

Garbage shouldn't sit on the same level as fluff comments no one bothered to vote on.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 4 months ago

Millions flies cannot be mistaken. Democratic mob cannot be mistaken. Mobs have never lynched anybody. How ignorant you are in your ego with your "whining" argument

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

So why be on lemmy then? I really don't agree with showing votes.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I think it's better to present a valid point against somebody's statement than straight down voting without giving a reason "just because don't like him". I think it would create positive discussion environment in lemmy. We are here after all to exchange ideas on lemmy. Aren't we?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

While engaging in discussion can be beneficial, it's important to recognize that not everyone is comfortable/interested in debating every point they disagree with. Downvoting allows users to express their disagreement without feeling pressured to engage in a back-and-forth that might not be constructive.

Additionally, some statements may not merit a detailed response, especially if they are inflammatory, misleading, or irrelevant. Encouraging only counter-arguments could lead to an environment where people feel obligated to justify every opinion, which stifles participation rather than promote a positive discussion.

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