this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2024
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This is impossible. The underlying protocol, ActivityPub does not have the concept of private votes. It is not up to Lemmy to decide. You'd need to revise the protocol for this and good luck with that.
ActivityPub can't evolve? Is there some insurmountable technical blocker?
I suspected this would be an issue and have avoided voting on controversial posts. But if everyone did as I do, there would be no open discussions about pressing topics.
It is possible that ActivityPub could add this feature. But it's not certain you'd even want that. Private votes would mean private for admins and mods too, so no more analyzing votes to look for down vote bots or manipulation or down vote brigading and all that stuff. Votes could lose all meaning. Admins and mods are unlikely to say goodbye to those moderation tools.
Even if it could be added, it's probably years away.
Fair points. I'm warming up to the idea of making votes public so that people don't have a false sense of privacy. I wish votes were actually private, but maybe it's not a big deal if your account can't be easily traced back to you in real life.