After reading your exciting new definition of the placebo effect and being asked to “name some advantages” that have been in every comment I’ve made, I think I know everything I need to about the quality of your opinions.

Also, never said unranked… I meant simply hide the rankings

Sounds trash to me. Fortunately it would be trivial for me to add them back in because again, all you’re doing is making the information inconvenient.

It also means that people don’t mindlessly upvote posts simply because there were a lot of upvotes

Is that how your mind works? I’ve never once done this and I’m extremely skeptical that anyone does. Sounds to me like you don’t like the content and have decided that nobody really does, they’re just upvoting it because it was upvoted.

Showing Upvotes/downvotes doesn’t show whether they are bots are not. It just means they’ll upvote/downvote more random shit and mess around wit the rest of the posts, so more crap rises to the top because they’re interfering with the rankings.

A log of votes is the data you need to discover bots. It doesn’t magically reveal them, nor did I claim it would.

Voting on random shit might make a slightly more plausible voting log for a bot but that’s going to be far more obvious than you think, won’t actually interfere with the rankings if it’s truly random and once again, not having rankings shown doesn’t address this problem either.

Votes and rankings are always knowable, even if you hide them from the UI. If there is a pressure to make bots plausible through random voting, that pressure exists regardless of it being shown on the default UI. All you’re doing is misleading users about what information they’re exposing.

There are easier ways to identify bots

Describe them.

And, it just aids abusive people

You’ve already claimed to be a victim of them and your solution does nothing to address it. You’re just adding another value to the list of poorly obscured information, because it’s what you personally want.

Thanks.

Problem is, it actually encourages a hive mind. I’ve already had 2 people try to bully me.

Then tell those people to get fucked.

I’d go one step further. Upvotes down votes and totals should be hidden entirely.

Unless you have an actual implementation of how that would work, telling us “what you’d do” is just a fantasy. You can’t “hide” things from federation – they’re either included, removed or made inconvenient to access.

Does “posting without external influence” even have any value besides sounding cool? The entire concept of Lemmy and Reddit is that external influence floats and sinks content. If you want unranked, anonymous content, you want 4chan (which is of course riddled with extremists and good content is almost entirely drowned out with worthless shitposts).

Personally, I’d rather that “external influence” was as fair and open and accountable as possible, rather than “I wonder if 500 of those votes are just Russian bots”.

It’s not technically possible with any model. Votes on Reddit are only kept private from other users – staff could look them up or reveal them to someone any time they wanted and you’d never know.

Even if you allowed voting without an account (which would be so easily manipulated that it would be worthless), you’d still be identifiable from your IP.

Yes, and there’s no genuine argument otherwise.

If you want Lemmy to grow and not be completely overrun with bots posting propaganda and signal boosting extremism, showing votes is the only way forward. It’s the only mechanism by which independent parties can discover and expose things like “every post and comment by this account is upvoted by these 20 other accounts that have never posted and whose names follow the same formula”.

The privacy you’re mourning never existed in the first place and it can’t exist on any platform. For Lemmy, it’s required for federation. On sites like Reddit, you have privacy from other users, but not from the company or anyone they sell that data to.

Since true privacy isn’t an option, it would be far better to be open about that lack of privacy. This thread is already riddled with people who thought their votes were private, rather than just inconvient to look up. That’s far more dangerous and deceptive.

This needs to happen, regardless of the ill-informed tantrums it may cause. If you want to upvote pornography without it being used against you, create accounts that are strictly for pornography and properly compartmentalize your accounts.

Yeah, how is this a shock to people? If they can’t have their own neoliberals in office, they would absolutely prefer to lose to another neoliberal than win with a progressive.

America desperately needs preferential voting.

They’re not mutually exclusive.

What progressives? There’s about 3 of them in politics. They don’t have the power to stand in the way of anything because they’re hopelessly outnumbered by “neoliberalism but you can have crumbs and social things”.

People like you need to wake up. You’re not going to get “slow progress” out of the lesser of two evils, you’re going to get a negligbly slower slide into fascism. There is no protecting your comfortable bubble at this point.

Who do you think I am?

They accomplished the majority of it by simply showing up. They didn’t need their guns or elaborate criminal conspiracies, they just applied for positions of power (however minor) and used that power to push their agenda and support their dogshit friends doing the same.

Meanwhile, progressivism on the internet has been taken over nihilistic neckbeards that just sit back and watch it all happen, making worthless promises about how if it gets too bad, their for-profit firearms will bail them out.

We used to get arrested.

Did anybody say admins aren’t entitled to block stuff

His “defederation bad (except pedos)” isn’t exactly wet with support for blocking instances for spam and extremism.

User just wanted a system to see everything and block what they didn’t want.

That system exists. It’s the “run your own server” that I explicitly mentioned. But let’s be honest, he doesn’t want that system (which again, he already has) for himself, he wants it for everyone else.

It’s the same bullshit that “free speech absolutists” push in every single thread about defederation – admins should be hands off and users should dig through through slurs, racism, homophobia looking for content worth engaging with.

It benefits exactly one group of people but apparently doesn’t set off your “bad-faith” radar.

Or they’re just not interested in wading through far-right extremists for 3 shitty memes.

After all, if your theory about “open spaces turn into Nazis and pedos because most people are secretly Nazis and pedos” were actually true, those sites would be the biggest sites in the world, not tiny little bubbles that last 6 months.

If you want to see far-right content and spam, join a far-right server or run your own, rather than trying to shame server owners into doing what you want.

Admins are entitled to decide what they platform and what they don’t. On top of that, the user experience of “just block 100 servers of Nazis and incels to get to the content you want to see” is complete dogshit.

This “it should all be user level” is just apologist bullshit.

Didn’t read.

Way to victim blame

“This woman scratched and bit me while I was raping her, so I’m the real victim”

I remember you now. You’re not worth my time and it doesn’t look like there’s anyone left in the thread who is. I didn’t read most of your comment but laughed when I saw you’ve lifted my insults to use as your own. Looks like you have made space for me in your head.

If you don’t want segregation, vote Republican but if you do want segregation, also vote Republican.

I’m not under any obligation to prove it to you until you supply the “evidence” you’re mentioning. In the domain of rhetoric, “laws don’t dissuade criminals” people sounds dumb as fuck and goes against the way we’ve run societies for thousands of years.

I’ve witnessed laws – which frequently go hand in hand with your “socially frowned upon” acts – change peoples behaviour, from drink driving to your own littering example.

Every crime is a calculation of risk and reward. The internet makes things lower risk, but there are absolutely laws that work. They’re why the web isn’t riddled with child pornography and why online drug marketplaces have to exist behind 10 layers of bullshit.

You’re advocating that the risk should be nonexistent and that victims have no avenues for justice.

Safe storage penalizes victims for being stolen from

Good. If you didn’t take reasonable steps to secure your firearms, your negligence armed criminals. Guns are already an exception to “dangerous things must be properly secured” thanks to crybaby gun owners.

Oh and don’t waste your breath with a “B-B-B-But LockPickingLawyer opened this gun safe with his flaccid cock” because that’s not even close to an insurmountable problem.

a tax to stop those dirty poors from having guns

You’re using poor people as a human shield. You’ve never advocated giving people guns as a form of welfare and realistically a gun is one of the last things those “dirty poors” need.

You’re a simp for a multi-billion industry that funds the very worst Republicans and puts profits before lives. You don’t have a leg to stand on.

glove compartments are necessary

Sounds like we know where you leave your gun. It’s grossly negligent and absolutely your fault. Either leave your gun at home (where I’m guessing it’s just as poorly secured) or don’t go to places that don’t want you.

Well it is if they’ve been charged with something. Oh so “no criminal record,” shocker Illegal

Laws that are a complete failure, which the pro-gun community opposes all changes to, including better enforcement.

Illegal if you’re a prohibited possessor

Consequences for other people. The “responsible gun owner” making the private sale gets away with selling a gun to a dangerous person. If we only charged underage people for buying alcohol (and not the person who supplied them), there would be zero expectation of those laws working.

And even with all that, publishing a list is still stupid

Yet again, not actually a thing I advocated, just something I mocked your reaction to. Let’s hope for your families sake you’re not so easily confused when you hear a bump in the night.

I put nobody in danger

Another worthless promise from a gun owner. Whatever minimal vetting you’ve been through is demonstrably not enough to ensure gun owners aren’t a danger. You cleared the same low bar as the people shooting at children who rang their doorbell or used their driveway to turn around.

If we reduce you to a statistic, it’s even more bullshitty. Every person in your household is at a greater risk of domestic homicide and suicide.

it’s your stupid ideas on guns

Are you still throwing a tantrum about an idea I didn’t suggest or supoort, or are you just assuming all of my opinions based on what the gun lobby have told you I believe?

Your laws have failed America. It’s 20 years past when “responsible gun owners” should have actually taken some responsibility.

Making things illegal absolutely stops criminals. It doesn’t stop all criminals, but that’s never been the expectation. If you want to dismiss laws on the basis of not being 100% effective, there’s not a single law you support.

You really need to get your feelings out about this don’t you? The world must no your opinion, even the people who aren’t actually advocating it.

Anyway, your feelings are bullshit. The pro-gun community routinely opposes safe storage laws and are happy to leave guns in glove compartments and closets. Not that the black market is required to arm criminals, given how easy it is to pass a background check, straw purchase or buy privately but again, the pro-gun community opposes reforms to combat all of that.

So whatever the fuck “The consequences are the people’s who commit the crime, not the gun owning populace as a whole who has not? Yes” is supposed to mean, it’s clear that you’re only upset that you would be in danger, since you put other people in danger all the time.