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 119 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks 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.

[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 21 points 4 weeks 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.

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

[–] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks 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 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 3 weeks ago
[–] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 4 weeks 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 4 weeks 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 4 weeks 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 4 points 4 weeks 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 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

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

[–] Pika@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Enkrod@feddit.org 2 points 3 weeks ago
[–] BlueKey@fedia.io 1 points 4 weeks 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 4 weeks ago (1 children)

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

[–] BlueKey@fedia.io 1 points 4 weeks ago

Exactly. I enabled displaying the domains of every user, so I noticed that FaceDeer is on the same instance as I am and so wanted to point out this odd difference.

[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 1 points 4 weeks 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 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks 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 4 weeks ago

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

[–] utopiah@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

everything you do on here is fully public.

Even DMs?

[–] sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 points 3 weeks 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 2 points 3 weeks 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".

[–] Andy_R@feddit.uk 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Yes.

I don't know of any clients that publicly show it, but the information is sent out as a json that can be read by anyone setup to receive them.

[–] utopiah@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Thanks for the clarification but is it for non-local DMs only or even local DMs and if so why?

[–] Andy_R@feddit.uk 1 points 3 weeks ago

Hmm I'm not sure if it affects local.

Because they're basically the same as a post or comment, it's how the fediverse works. They get sent out to anyone listening, and whoever is listening directs it where to go i.e. a community or users inbox. So all instances can update with a new post to their users who are subbed. In theory the DM would get ignored by everyone else who isn't the target, but one could easily set it up to not do so.