How does the fediverse handle upvotes on different instances? Does each instance have its own count or are upvotes summed up across multiple instances if the upvotes system (upvotes/boosts/likes) is similar enough?

cypher_greyhat, 10 months ago

Honestly, I'd be happy in a world without visible "Like" and "Dislike" counts. People with differing opinions always end up being punished by the current systems, encouraging group-think.

ram, 10 months ago

Like what opinions?

cypher_greyhat, 10 months ago

Depending on the board, for example, if I said I like using an Apple computer, I would get downvoted to oblivion by zealots. I mean, just because people don't like my preference doesn't mean what I said is invalid. Also, I use Mac, Windows & Linux depending on the task. Fanboys can't understand that.

ram, 10 months ago

In the latter case, I think it might be feasible to prevent upvotes from being counted multiple times if the username is identical on different instances, since upvotes are public. Is there already a mechanism to do this?

If @dude upvotes and @dude downvotes, how do we decide which is the canonical vote? How can we say for sure they’re even run by the same user?

Also, isn’t it much more common in the Fediverse than on central platforms for the same user to have multiple accounts with different usernames?

This was the norm on Reddit too.

I suppose this would only be possible if the different instances would log IP addresses and share this information with other instances. That doesn’t seem desirable to me at all, and probably wouldn’t be legal, at least in Europe, because of the GDPR. Are there other possibilities? Cookies?

Let’s not inundate the fediverse with tracking cookies and privacy invasion.

I get where you’re coming from, but I just think that the solutions to these problems aren’t actually solutions, and they’re a case where the cure is worse than the ailment.

Uprise42, 10 months ago

Simple solution, let us see who upvotes a post. Kind of like how Facebook lets you see you liked your post. It wouldn’t prevent posts from getting brigaded with bot votes, but it would let us see that it is happening. Oh 1k votes on this post? But half of them are from dude@differentinstance.net? Probably bot manipulation.

dandom_rude, 10 months ago

On the user profile you can see which posts a user has upvoted. But if you could see it directly on a particular post, it would be pretty helpful, I guess.

kaupas24, 10 months ago

If you're on kbin, click on more and then activity. You'll see who boosted, who liked and who down voted said post or comment

dandom_rude, 10 months ago

Upvotes and downvotes could simply balance each other out. Since upvotes and downvotes are public, it should be possible to check the user profiles in question. But of course, besides surely being technically difficult, that would require that it's actually the same person. This seems impossible to prove, as long as the same username can be registered multiple times on different instances.

However, I think it would be possible to keep a central database containing only the information which username has already been registered within the Fediverse - a bit like domain registrars. When a new user joins, the operators of an instance could look up whether the desired username is already occupied on another instance. This would certainly mean losing some autonomy, since the instances would no longer have sovereignty over available usernames. But I think it would be beneficial overall if usernames were only assigned once within the Fediverse.
For example, when it comes to counting upvotes and downvotes. But also to protect users from being discredited: I'm afraid that with the status quo it is quite easy to impersonate another user, since you can register the same username on another instance and do whatever you please with it. But that's a completely different question, which I fear will become more relevant the more popular the Fediverse becomes (unfortunately, not only users with good intentions will join).

But please don't get me wrong: I find the decentralized open source culture of the Fediverse extremely desirable - it is, in a way, a return to the utopia of the early Internet. I am very happy to be here and to witness that exchange among people is indeed possible without the influence of major corporations like Meta or reddit and all their buisiness schemes.

I just think it's important to have a reasonably meaningful "random Internet points" system, whether it's called karma or something else. I think these points are (unfortunately) the central motivation for many users to post content, which is probably why they play an essential role in the mass appeal of any social media plattform.

duringoverflow, 10 months ago

I think it would be possible to keep a central database containing only the information which username has already been registered within the Fediverse - a bit like domain registrars. When a new user joins, the operators of an instance could look up whether the desired username is already occupied on another instance. This would certainly mean losing some autonomy, since the instances would no longer have sovereignty over available usernames. But I think it would be beneficial overall if usernames were only assigned once within the Fediverse.

I don't think this is realistic at all. It breaks the current philosophy of the fediverse where each instance can be both autonomous and federated. What would happen if for example an instance wanted to federate after they already had a couple accounts. Would they need to delete these users because the username exists? This is the reason that the second part (after the "@") exists.

Also look at the email. Ofcourse it is possible to have the same name with users in other email services. It would be very weird not to be allowed to get the yourname@yourfavoriteservice.com because the yourname@anotherservice.com already exists.

What you are suggesting introduces and requires a central authority that would be responsible for that, but this again, breaks the philosophy of the fediverse itself.

ram, 10 months ago

It’d not just break the philosophy, but the practical use of the fediverse. People use Mastodon, Peertube, and Lemmy privately amongst a friend group, or even on a LAN; maybe a small company uses Lemmy internally. Then they make it federated later, when they want more users, more content, whatever.

dandom_rude, 10 months ago

Yes, you are right - it's not realistic: On the one hand because it would be hard to come to a consensus on which instances should be changing all those usernames that are registered on other instances at a given point in time. On the other hand there would always be the need to change some usernames.

You probably could have some sort of a best practice to check said public database (btw I meant more of a phone book, not a db where passwords are stored) even for unfederated, local or private instances so that the operators of those instances could only register "free" usernames. But it is indeed not acceptable at all to oblige private instances to feed their usernames into a public database as well. Accordingly, it would not be possible to prevent usernames from being assigned multiple times and having to be changed later on when an instances whose usernames were not in the database decides to federate. This probably wouldn't happen all too often, but it would certainly happen regularly. I hadn't thought of that.

Scooby, 10 months ago

Maybe I’m wrong, but even if it is the same person on both instances, wouldn’t (username)@(instance) make a unique user account?

ram, 10 months ago

Yes, which is the thing the OP’s trying to overcome.

kglitch, 10 months ago

The answer is "badly".

It's even worse if you compare the way kbin vs lemmy handle upvotes.

Don't get me started on down votes.

But its good enough to mostly work on average :D

kosure, 10 months ago

Agreed, it's all a bit wonky, and it still mostly works. Really I think it's mostly down to a design problem in word-choice. "Boost" kinda makes sense in microblogging, but not in link-sharing (unless you know that your kbin also has a microblogging feature, which...) I think "repost" make a lot more sense but I think that horse is out of the barn, unfortunately.

dbilitated, 10 months ago

I’m not sure it’s possible to reasonably prevent, reddit had issues throughout its life because of it. I think they implemented measures but they were regularly bypassed. with federation it’s probably impossible. I’m not sure how much it matters for most threads but it might be an unfortunate fact of life