this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2026
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I woke up today, to a public comment in a Lemmy community asking a series of tagged accounts why they had downvoted certain posts

I thought that reactions to posts and comments are anonymous and now I don't really know what to feel about Lemmy any more.

In this case I had downvoted a poster because of its design, but was confronted publicly for being racist because the person assumed that I downvoted the message on the poster

EDIT: changed the title from "How" to "Why" because it broke rule nr 5 about it being a support question

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[–] Andy_R@feddit.uk 83 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

The Fediverse is open, everything you do on here is fully public.

It's why I prefer it over reddit, where who knows what really happens with all the vote manipulation and brigading.

To answer your question, it is all listed alongside upvotes on the posts if using mbin.

[–] utopiah@lemmy.world 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

everything you do on here is fully public.

Even DMS?

[–] sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

ActivityPub is public by design and admins can easily read DMs. Not sure about it Joe public can read any dm.

[–] utopiah@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

Admins of most services where data aren't encrypted can read data that is not public so I'd assume that by default.

Now my question specifically is about "Joe public".

[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 14 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Depends on the instance, mine is an mbin instance but the upvotes and downvotes are hidden.

I remember coming across a site where you could put in a Fediverse URL and it would tell you who had upvoted and downvoted it, presumably it had an instance in the background that was tracking all that.

[–] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Yes, the information is sent to your instance, and then is being censored by your instance. It's personal choice for the instance and it's support. But your instance must either a be commonly supporting you not seeing it, or dictating you aren't seeing it.

Kind of like the championship football game played in the U.S. today before the Superbowl, where Fox edited out access to seeing people paying tribute to the man murdered by ice.

Sometimes it's good to have information, sometimes people think it is not

[–] sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 hours ago
[–] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I would like to see the ratio of up/down, because that's IMO much more informative, if you allow votes at all. Personally I think votes just triggers some dopamine crap and is totally useless most of the times (exceptions are serious places where responsible people downvote wrong information for example)

[–] SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I would like to see the ratio of up/down

That's typically enabled/disabled in the settings of the client.

[–] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 1 day ago

Fiddled around a bit and found a setting for that, or so it seems, gotta go collect some downvotes to try it out 😁

Thanks!

[–] JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Edit: lemvotes.org, linked below by another comment.

Aw, shoot. It doesn't seem to work for PieFed. For example, here's a link straight to the original instance and thread: https://piefed.social/c/historyart/p/1701717/

Changing that "p" to "post" didn't seem to work, either.

[–] Enkrod@feddit.org 0 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Isn't PieFed explicitly written to make votes anonymous again? Or am I thinking of something else?

[–] Pika@sh.itjust.works 1 points 9 hours ago

Another commenter stated (its a little ways down the thread) they abandoned that plan due to complexity. (and other instance admins getting mad they couldnt see votes)

They ended up moving to a system where you now decide if you want your votes to federate outside the instance or not.

[–] BlueKey@fedia.io 0 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I'm also on fedia and I can see who upvoted and boosted a comment / thread / post.

[–] idegenszavak@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago

Fedia.io is also an mbin instance, you are speaking about the same thing.

[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 0 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Can't see who downvoted, though. I've actually considered switching instances over this since that's the most important thing to "be serious" with, it'd be nice if people were more judicious with their downvotes and having them be an obvious public thing might make people think twice about that. But the whole upvote/downvote thing in general just seems like a broken concept to me a this point and I don't care all that much about it.

[–] sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

I am on an instance without downvotes and I really don't miss it. I think it took me about a week for the muscle memory of downloading stupid comments to fade.

If something is truly outrageous, I take it as a sign to just block the author. And if something is against the rules, I'll report it.

[–] BlueKey@fedia.io 2 points 1 day ago

I think downvotes are hidden for every Mbin instance. I don't know how it is with other software.