Like a retweet. People that follow you will see what you boost on their feed.
You can subscribe to magazines/communities but and follow users.
Also, upvotes (on kbin) are favorites. And any upvote/downvote will show you did it and federate to other instances. For example go to “more | activity” on your comment and select “favourites” to see what I mean
That’s a fair point. But there are people who live in situations where such activity has legal/societal implications.
Think some countries that put people to death for blasphemy or people in the states who associate being transgender with being literal child molesters.
Sure keep your account private but that isn’t always feasible even if you try. We see people get doxxed even from innocuous breadcrumbs of statements made over time.
Or don’t favorite/upvote and yet it’s easy to inadvertently do so which can be an issue.
That’s why I’m for a way to handle it, if possible, that minimizes the bad actors. And if not possible then it needs to be really really clear.
Like “upvote” is followed by something that succinctly notes “Favorite saved and ready to share across the fediverse”
Yeah. Because each instance would have a record of that but there’s nothing to stop a bad actor from doing that on one instance and federating that out.
Of course a bad actor can set up their own instance and just create thousands of fake bot accounts and do the same.
Edit: The more I think about it @VerifiablyMrWonka the only way to do it would be to have some kind of activitypub transaction that is flagged as an instances reputation.
E.g. it’s the same as using the per instance account but it allows you to say “here’s how kbin.social” calculated the reputation/weight of this item.
And then each instance can opt to include that or not as they see fit. Maybe they federate with all instances but only show the weight/reputation “favorites”/“reduce” from those that they trust to maintain that info. Lemmy.world, sure, but the new instances such as haxor.1488.de.feder.at yeah… that’s probably a no so by default all of those don’t show/include in that instances feed.
I see that ActivityPub makes it hard to do it and if it can’t be done then it should be visible (so people can know and act accordingly)
The only “alternative” approach I can see would be to have a per instance account that is given the activity (say upvote/downvote)
So… let’s say I’m on kbin.social and upvote this comment.
Kbin.social knowing me (since it’s my account) logs the upvote but does so as if single_instance_system_account@kbin.social did the upvote.
That is then what is replicated across the fediverse.
I assume that breaks the “intent” of the protocol and could be an issue but does let other instances decide to filter out that activity (if they decide to do so) by having some attribute or flag that denotes that this “account” is the fediverse instance account (e.g. not a user).
Boosts, however, should be shared since it’s like a retweet/shout out and are meant to be shared.
Of course that means I can no longer see my own upvote/downvote activity.
If that was also wanted then you could add a table that basically logs that but isn’t federated. E.g. a local instance reference that can be used for that instance to show the activity.
This way there’s less chance of an issue of somebody knowing a users account seeing activity like this:
A man, say in Iran, upvoted something about the prophet that somebody else found disrespectful
A christian teen upvoted something about atheism.
A woman reading about how to leave a domestic abuse situation.
Somebody curious about transgender reassignment
Either there needs to be a way to minimize the risks of such activity being seen/shared across the fediverse or it needs to be very very clear that even if you don’t see it that what you do is shouted across the fediverse and that others can and will be able to see it.
Ahh. So what would be helpful then, for smaller communities that started here not knowing there was one someplace else would be to add some kind of post that points to the specific community.
As we’re still learning as we go here
How do I, a user with a kbin.social account, create a post there?
I was asking for clarification
So I’m on kbin. And your comment can be described as
On kbin.social from k.fe.derate.me
And my reply when you see it would be
On k.fe.derate.me from kbin.social
What happens to posts/comments and any media/content that is hosted on a server that just goes away (for example if I created one virtually and then deleted it or if a sdcard on a pi is corrupted)
Not to mention that we can “visualize” the segments and networks by the numbers. Makes it easier to recognize, as an analogy,
This state, that city, this road, that house.
Versus ipv6. Of course there’s so much space in v6 that it isn’t an issue except it’s such a pain to work with for people who tend to think in ipv4 octets and bit masks
Boost as a “shout out” being public is alright. I guess for us Reddit folks it’s like a cross post to our own u/sub that followers could see.
Upvote/downvote, though, should be private. Not sure if that’s ever truly possible though because by the nature of the fediverse it has to be replicated across to other instances and so everything is “open” as I understand it.
It may not be easily visible in the UI but it’s there in the data.
So I try to think of everything here like it’s a postcard not a letter.
Any mail carrier who sees it (and makes a copy) can see it all.
That’s true. Just something to consider since there are real life bad actors and things can and will be a security/safety risk for some groups