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.
Good. If I downvote something its for a reason, and I don’t care who knows.
In fact, I’m tempted to say I WANT people to know I’m not the one downvoting them when I disagree.
SAME its happened on Reddit where I would have a back and forth w someone where we disagreed but it was respectful, and then in the middle of it I’d notice the other person’s comments being -1 even new ones. Meaning someone who isnt in the convo would start downvoting the other person, and I’d be like ‘what if they think I did it? What if that damages a mutual understanding they were close to reaching? What if that turns them off from considering a different point of view bc they assume I’m doing it and that I’m hostile?’ Then sometimes I’d be like “sorry someone is downvoting you its not me”
People might ask you to provide context for your down vote.
Recently somebody got butthurt about being called out on it.
I think the feature is nice because you can spot shill ops, as those accounts travel in packs.
New articles for politicians are pretty obvious about it but so are generic karma farmers. Although I am not sure why farm karma on here.
People can certainly ask about reasons for voting, but that doesn’t mean anyone has to provide the answer. Nobody is entitled to know a person’s reason for voting on posts except for that person themselves.
They can ask, and I can tell them to fuck right off. Simple.
People might also ask you to provide further justification of your comment. In both cases you can either engage in a civil manner, tell them to eat a bag of dicks or just ingore.
That’s cool but I think the votes are more trustworthy (in any voting system) if all people feel comfortable voting without some sort of retaliation. Maybe there could be a toggle and you can see who voted that doesn’t mind the vote being public.