If an instance becomes oppressive, nothing is stopping you from going to a new one. You can’t do that with Reddit. Let’s say my instance Lemmy.ca becomes awful, I can make a new account on another and still comment on this community. That’s the beauty of the Fediverse.
So keep that in mind when interacting with the fediverse
These are public forums, it’s almost the point for things to be public. You could argue that votes shouldn’t be part of it, but ultimately due to the decentralized nature they must be communicated to all servers
You don’t have voting privacy here on Lemmy though, and theoretically instance admins could “punish” you based on voting patterns.
But decentralization helps that
If an instance becomes oppressive, nothing is stopping you from going to a new one. You can’t do that with Reddit. Let’s say my instance Lemmy.ca becomes awful, I can make a new account on another and still comment on this community. That’s the beauty of the Fediverse.
On the other hand, harvesting that sort of data is as simple as creating an instance and Federating with whatever sub you want to spy on
Is it really considered spying if the sub is pretty much shouting the information freely to whoever wants to request it?
I have intercepted this communication to say yes, it’s still spying! 🕵️
So keep that in mind when interacting with the fediverse
These are public forums, it’s almost the point for things to be public. You could argue that votes shouldn’t be part of it, but ultimately due to the decentralized nature they must be communicated to all servers
They already do, some instances or communities will ban you for downvoting everything.
Which is kinda fair, why are you here if everything displeases you?