this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2025
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Fedibridge
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Not built into the Lemmy software, no. But there's for sure data mining and tracking happening, with how open the fediverse is. If you actually think there is none of that, you don't seem to understand how the fediverse actually works. Anyone can just hook up their server to the fediverse and start harvesting your data freely if they want to.
That's more about discipline and applies to every social media. There's no way to say "I don't want to share this" on the fediverse. Even private messages are shared.
Well, Lemmy isn't the one being transparent then though. Since Lemmy hides votes from its users, but shares them with other instances.
When you register on Reddit, you consent to being tracked. Possibly across the web via cookies. This is not the case with Lemmy.
Otherwise it’s illegal. At least in the EU. You must get a users consent if you want to track them.
Of course someone could collect data on your up/down votes and what you write, but it’s technically illegal to use the data.
Tracking mostly happens with cookies, which is not present in Lemmy.
“There’s no way to say I don’t want to share this”… Yes there is. Don’t hit the upvote button, if you don’t want anyone to know.
Votes are public. They are just not exposed to everyone by default. Only admins on Lemmy. But go to Mbin and votes are public.
Mods can see them too
Strangely not through the default lemmy UI, but tesseract supports it
On all comms or just the comm they moderate?
The ones they mod
Well yes, that's what I meant with the part before that.
This isn't unique to Lemmy, every social media including Reddit allows you to prevent sharing something by never posting it in the first place.
I'm saying beyond that there's nothing more you can do. So Lemmy literally doesn't do anything more there than Reddit did.
For context, this was in response to this part of your comment (emphasis mine):
Which sounds like you're saying Lemmy is somehow different and better than Reddit at this, which it really isn't.
I'm okay with people knowing I upvote stuff on !lego@lemm.ee
I'm not okay with Reddit forcing me to use their app to do data mining directly on my phone, and not allowing me to use a VPN (Lemmy.world has the same issue to be honest)
That's one thing I loved when I was on kbin. You could always see upvotes and downvotes.