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.

  • Muddybulldog@mylemmy.winOP
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    1 year ago

    Yes.

    Just muddling around I’ve built queries that: (a) list all of my post & comments, everybody who voted on them, and their votes (b) tally how many times specific users have upvoted or downvoted me. © identifies the most prolific voters across the Fediverse and the communities they are voting in (d) identifies users with the same username or display name across all instances and correlates the activities across those accounts.

    These are all for the sake of learning and are innocuos the way I’m using them. It is plain to see that someone with skills and an agenda could make more out of it than I have.

    • azron@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      So you have raw database access and you can see that data. Why is this surprising? The systems I’ve used that solve storing data encrypted have massive usibility hits around exchanging and authenticating keys to a point where it sucks so bad I just want to disable it (matrix is a good example, non question their key exchange bullshit is hindering their adoption). I’m not saying this couldn’t be fixed but should it? Most services that use a database will be inline with your discovery of how Lemmy uses that database. Storing something encrypted that is meant to be viewed publicly is the same outcome with more steps. If someone cares enough to monetize it just patch the code to change whatever behavior you don’t like. I havent seeing anything about an acceptance test for Lemmy instances or anything that requires someone to use an unaltered version of Lemmy. How do you know the server admin isn’t already doing all of this? You don’t. Don’t expect privacy in public spaces.

    • sebi@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      So you can get the users voting on posts on other instances?

      Could it be anonymized, so you can get exact up/downvote data from your instance, but when it comes to other instances you only get the absolute up/downvotes?

    • azron@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      So you have raw database access and you can see that data. Why is this surprising? The systems I’ve used that solve storing data encrypted have massive usibility hits around exchanging and authenticating keys to a point where it sucks so bad I just want to disable it (matrix is a good example, non question their key exchange bullshit is hindering their adoption). I’m not saying this couldn’t be fixed but should it? Most services that use a database will be inline with your discovery of how Lemmy uses that database. Storing something encrypted that is meant to be viewed publicly is the same outcome with more steps. If someone cares enough to monetize it just patch the code to change whatever behavior you don’t like. I havent seeing anything about an acceptance test for Lemmy instances or anything that requires someone to use an unaltered version of Lemmy. How do you know the server admin isn’t already doing all of this? You don’t. Don’t expect privacy in public spaces.

    • azron@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      So you have raw database access and you can see that data. Why is this surprising? The systems I’ve used that solve storing data encrypted have massive usibility hits around exchanging and authenticating services to a point where it sucks. I’m not saying this couldn’t be fixed but should it? Most services that uses a database will be inline with your discovery of how Lemmy uses that database. Storing something encrypted that is meant to be viewed publicly is the same outcome with more steps. If someone cares enough to monetize it just patch the code to change whatever behavior you don’t like. I havent seeing anything about an acceptance test for Lemmy instances or anything that requires someone to use an unaltered version of Lemmy. How do you know the server admin isn’t already doing all of this? You don’t. Don’t expect privacy in public spaces.

      • IronKrill@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        You posted three times, may want to delete the extras. Did you press post multiple times?

        • agoramachina@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          It seems these multi-posts are typically coming from a user getting an error message when their post actually goes through, then they try posting again.

          After I learned about that I’ve been bookmarking comments I want to reply to, copy my intended post in another document, then check later to see if what I wrote was actually posted. If yes, yay, don’t have to worry about multiposting. If no, I just post once the server isn’t being weird.

          • azron@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            That is exactly what happened. I posted it said network error and acted like I hadn’t submitted my comment. Rinse repeat and here we are, It also looks like they were auto deleted though? I don’t see them and I don’t see them and I didn’t delete them.

            • azron@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              Nevermind found them and deleted them and got the same network error while deleting. Lucky me I picked lemmy.ml before the reddit exodus.