this post was submitted on 27 May 2024
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submitted 6 months ago by dogsnest@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] redcalcium@lemmy.institute 17 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Due to how federation works, downvotes are actually somewhat public because instance owners can query them in lemmy database, though instance owners probably won't tell you if you ask due to privacy reason. If you're interested in something like this, you can run your own instance.

[–] Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 13 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Yeah, it's actually ... a bit creepy.

Federated voting in general seems like it could use some rethinking to enable private voting but also to protect against vote manipulation. Right now the fediverse is arguably incredibly vulnerable to vote manipulation campaigns.

[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Open (and distributed) and private are two very difficult things to intermingle. You can mitigate some issues, but at the end of the day the two ideas have to butt against each other.

[–] laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 6 months ago (3 children)

I hate to suggest it but I wonder if a blockchain would work here

[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 6 months ago

Blockchains are the antithesis of anonymity. Pseudo anonymity isn't anonymity, it just doesn't scream your name out there from the get go.

[–] capital@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

What aspect of the points mentioned in the thread do you feel are addressed by blockchain?

[–] laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Openly distributed while being private(-ish; I know blockchains aren't truly private but it could at least obfuscate it adequately against casual or semi serious attempts to identify someone)

I'll admit I'm no expert or even particularly well versed in blockchain technologies, but my (limited) understanding of them suggests this might actually be the kind of thing it's good at (as opposed to how it could seemingly do anything a few years ago and everyone was trying to shoehorn a blockchain into their products)

And to underline part of my comment, I did say "I wonder if..." rather than asserting that it would work or even that I bet it would work

[–] capital@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Fedi technologies are already distributed. That's literally what federation is about.

Blockchain isn't private by default although some have gone that direction. Bitcoin, for example, is pseudonymous - all transactions are public to the world though no tx is tied to an identity on chain.

Any privacy features you're imagining can be built for a blockchain solution to this problem could be built into a "normal", web 2.0, federated solution that would be far less expensive to run, resource-wise.

It's almost always the case that when someone comes up with blockchain as the solution to some problem, they mean distributed or maybe self-hosted. Neither of which requires a blockchain.

Check out videos involving crypto on the Cartoon Avatar's youtube channel such as this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xq721IAqBo&t.

[–] PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks 1 points 6 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

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[–] 01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It likely could, but it's not trivial to implement.

[–] laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, I'd imagine not, though I'm fairly confident any solution to this would be nontrivial

[–] 01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 1 points 6 months ago

Fair point. Blockchain might be the quickest to implement just because the infrastructure is already established, even if it's not trivial. Not sure, though.

[–] r3df0x@7.62x54r.ru 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I was wondering about this. If they didn't keep track of who is voting, manipulation would be easier then it already is. The problem is that rogue instance admins could make votes public.

[–] Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 1 points 6 months ago

One possible answer is to allow anyone to see votes categorized by instance, so you know where they're originating from.

Small/single user instances could be aggregated together/anonymized or maybe that's just the price you pay for having a single user instance.

[–] afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

I want the ability to see who down votes what but don't want to have other people see that about me. Ha

[–] Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works 2 points 6 months ago

I think this is public information on some services. Not Lemmy, but other federated services.