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.
I fully expect encryption to be intertwined here, at least on specialty instances. This can not stay this way, right?
Why not? kbin literally has an “activity” button that shows everyone who downvotes, it’s public info. Makes blocking morons a breeze because I can say something like “trans people are cool” and then get rid of everyone who gets angry about it.
If you’re scared of people knowing what you downvote, you might need to change your downvote habits.
Your logic is intact and I personally don’t care who sees my upvotes, etc. But if people are going to get deeply invested in their activities here, the current state of privacy isn’t enough. Things like DMs should be between just those two parties, or people will have to go elsewhere if they start exchanging sensitive info. I fully expect to see crypto infused here with wallet options eventually, so that’s something that needs lockdown. Your saved posts could become a detailed picture of your personal likes over time, and there’s no reason to share that with anyone. Forcing people to run their own instance for privacy’s sake is unreasonable. There are reasons other than being shy about downvoting a post. As another commenter put it, ‘go ahead and dm me about why I downvoted your shitty post. I’ll tell you’
The fact that this can be abused is quite alarming to be honest. Of course one could create a throwaway just to avoid this, but imagine if some admin of a different instance decide to ban you with a pretext for seeing a downvote on a post saying trans people are not people (which they might have created just to attract people and see who does downvote). Downvoting/Upvoting detailed info should not be visible to anyone imho to keep it transparent.