The Problem with the Fediverse
I have no issues with the way it is implemented, I have no issues with it at all. For context, I left Twitter to join the Fedi, and it has been great so far! I use Misskey for microblogging, PeerTube for uploading videos, and Lemmy for Reddit-style discussions. The Fediverse is amazing!
Except, idk, for the fact that it is too fragmented? I hope I am using the right words. Like, the current instance I am on does not have support for communities, so i have to do it the hard way and mention @fediverse@lemmy.world so that I can post here. It's a good workaround, considering it doesn't have built-in support for communities.
But my point still stands. It's not a Lemmy/PieFed problem. It's mostly a fediverse problem. Implementing communities for every platform would help the Fediverse. Not only does it solve discoverability/algorithm issues of the Fediverse (since now when you follow a community, you get all posts from that community), but also it would interconnect every platform (Misskey, PeerTube, Mastodon, etc.)
Imagine you don't have to use your Lemmy account to check everything on Lemmy. Instead of creating channels in PeerTube, just post to an existing channel/community, and people subscribed to that channel/community can find you easily. I see this as an absolute win for everyone.
I understand this would require collaboration between all developers of all software. But hopefully, this is possible?
Or am I asking for too much?
If I am wrong, then is there any way in which we can solve this issue?
I have an issue with Fediverse, Lemmy to be exact. The platform is allowing an outside tool that was built for a mod or admin of a community to see votes, how people vote, but it is being exploited by users to spy/dox/harass, gang-up, and use as a tool to exploit other users nefariously. The tool is called Lemvotes. You can access the portal here. Here is a quote from a user (go $fsck yourself @ lemmy.world) who exploits this sharing how to use it with other users;
This tool, imo, should be banned, or the platform to be "patched" to only allow this to work for admins, not users who abuse it.
There is no such thing as a "vote" in ActivityPub/ActivityStreams. This idea of "up/down votes" is just an abstraction of a message saying "Actor A liked B", where B is an Post/Comment (and a post/comment itself just being an abstraction of ActivityStreams objects).
That is to say: there is no way to selectively hide the content a message. If you want federation to work and you want people outside your own server to see your posts, then the server needs to broadcast the messages to anyone listening.
Tools like lemvotes are just exposing this information. There is no point in trying to censor the tool, because this information is available publicly, and any motivated person will be able to track this information.
If you are concerned about what people think of your "likes" and "dislikes", then do not use a public social media service and only communicate with provably secure communication tools.
I think this is less a problem of "nefarious bad actors" and more a problem of expectations. Honestly, I agree with the quoted comment: I think they should be visible all the time, like they already are on Mbin. I think it would help change the way people think about votes so that they don't expect Reddit-style anonymous votes and instead it's a more public Facebook/Twitter-style like system.
If you really want private votes, Piefed has feature that lets you anonymize your votes, but a determined bad actor could still deanonymize you. I think it's better to change expectations than to try to massage a fundamentally public platform into having private votes, but it's good there's an option for people since it's so highly requested.