Not my account, but want to advocate for it. Because of, personally, I find it hilarious.
So, it seems like a mod with username MysticMushroom1776 @lemmy.dbzer0.com has some interesting policies about interacting with their content.
I agree that this user called PyroRondo has no content for 5 months straight. This is unusual but totally isn't against any rules of Lemmy.
As I suspect, they reacted to a few posts of MysticMushroom1776 @lemmy.dbzer0.com during random session of content scrolling. No brigading or any other types of harassment. I even suspect that these reactions were in communities connected to mod's AI art, not political ones.
And this for some reason triggered a ban in all comunities. Not in 1 or 2. Moreover, it seems like this mod uses specialized tools, that allow to track downvotes on their content made by other users with ability to get their usernames. I may be wrong, but I don't think that such tools are basic for moderators on Lemmy.
Edit: typo.
I see this thing for the first time. Interesting tool. But I think that this one is kinda wrong to exist? Aren't votes and downvotes supposed to be a mostly private and detectable only for admins?
If you want your votes to be (somewhat) private, probably the best thing to do is to create an alternative account and use that for voting without making any comments/posts.
PieFed also gives you an option so that your votes are only shared within the same instance. So, tools like "lemvotes" wouldn't be able to pick up on your voting history. In that case only the local instance Admins (and maybe moderators) would be able to see your voting history.
From this user it is fairly obvious that it was created recently. They downvoted 49 times in the first few minutes of activity. They then upvoted once a few days later.
https://lemvotes.org/user/PyroRondo@lemmy.world
Based on the first day of activity, it almost does look like this was an account created just for downvoting.
It's funny how you say that's the best strategy in a thread about somebody getting banned for it.
Nothing is private on the Fediverse.
Kbin used to publicly show them. It’s a design choice of the software not too.
I was briefly on kbin so I do remember the bickering over every comment, which I hated. I wanted to defederate lemvotes since that also brought more bickering to lemmy, plus I'm not a fan of the idea. As an admin, I can easily see who downvoted me, even find who consistently downvotes me, but it doesn't really personally help me. There was so much drama with lemvotes and calling out people all the time, I think it is supposed to discourage downvoting by making people aware they are under survelliance. I poked through Mbin and could only see upvotes (boosts), not downvotes (reduces). I do wish for a way to disable downvotes on the individual community level in lemmy, the way Piefed does, then our community wouldn't need lemvotes anymore (hopefully). The votes can be retrieved through the API, but the average user just browses without it.
Not really a design choice. It's just not possible to hide due to federation
Thanks for the info. Totally different from Reddit where only admins could see this info.
On reddit, the distinction between "admin" and "user" is whatever Reddit decides it to be.
In the Fediverse, the distinction between "admin" and "user" is whatever the user decides it to be. You are completely free to build and admin your very own instance. So can I, and everyone here. You are free to use the admin-only information you glean from that instance under the user account you are using here.
You vastly overestimate my technical capabilities!
I remember this being an issue when I first joined, to an instance admin is a simple as performing an SQL query .
Unfortunately Lemmy is full of people who can't stand criticism and actually prefer having it this way, instead of finding a compromise.
Mods can see votes on content in their communities without needing external tools too. The information is public, it's just not usually made visible to everyone.
Community moderators can also see who has upvoted or downvoted on their own communities.
How? I'm a mod and haven't figured that out yet (short of looking up things one at a time on lemvotes).
Click the "..." in any post on your community and it will have a "View Votes" option
Hmm... Okay, thanks for the info.
Lemmy certainly isn't a very privacy-respecting platform.
It never pretended to be. It's a platform for broadcasting actions based on usernames not secure communications. Kinda cross purposes to think you can effectively do both. Why I liked that kbin was very upfront and let users see all engagement right from the post. It can provide a level of anonymity if you want (though community moderation resists this because strong anonymous protections just leads to abuse), but privacy for that persona isn't part of the plank.
Eh, that's not really true. The concept of "privacy" has been broadly corrupted by centralized services. There is no "privacy" when you provide information to another person, let alone publish it to the world. Never has been. You never had any actual "privacy" on any platform. What you had was admins lightly concealing from you the manner in which they used the information you provided. That's not "privacy".
Actual privacy only comes when you shut your mouth and keep a thought to yourself. As soon as you put the idea out, you abandoned your expectation of privacy.
The purpose of Lemmy is communication. It is designed to share the information you provide to the general public, whether that information is a post, a comment, an upvote or downvote. It is designed to limit and bypass attempts at centralized control over the flow of that information.