Because if lay users can see how I vote within the app, then I might start being harassed by people for daring to downvote them or daring to upvote someone. And may stay tracking my voting habits.

In which case, I’d probably stop voting.

Having a barrier to that info is better than no barrier even if it’s not impossible, imo.

I typically operate under the assumption that basically anything I decide to post on a public forum is not private.

Call me crazy, but I care less about the instance admins being able to see my vote history than regular users. For me the latter will produce a chilling effect on how I operate with the site moreso than the former, even if admins have more power that can be abused. I was already aware of the votes not actually being public and the idea admins could see that info seemed to be a given, but I still think there’s a difference between having a motivated malicious user go out of their way to look (making an instance, looking on a different platform, etc) vs making it simple for lay users to see that info within the platform itself (which I what I think is under discussion, currently).

And honestly, if a solution could be determined to help make votes anonymous but still allow admins/mods to deal with bots/trolls, then I’d be all for it.

16 years ago, that was Reddit for me.

Guess we’ll see.

Also, to push people to other instances to avoid centralization.

Best instance stays winning.

Well it’s definitely not Reddit lite.

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If Dessalines is receiving money from the Chinese or other fascist government to develop the Lemmy sourcecode, even if only partially funding the project alongside other funding from e.g. the EU, then I can well understand why he would want to see them kept happy - on top of what he may feel personally.

You people are so lost up your own asses, you will never find yourselves. Conspiratorial nonsense driven by your McCarthyism 2.0 with a complete lack of self awareness.

But I guess I shouldn’t expect anything more from a NATO funded user and instance, right? The Heritage Foundation and CIA signing the checks over here?

not merely removing comments, but also mass-banning from communities people have never commented in before

So moderating their instance?

and then deleting the mod log entries afterwards

Where’s the evidence for this? I didn’t see that in the original post.

tankies are advocating for a society where I and those like me would be killed.

Where and why would you be targeted by them?

Unfortunately the author has a few paragraphs that miss the mark and strike me as coming from more of a centrist or right-wing “kids these days are too soft” which feels very off-base and disconnected from the issue.

Welcome to The Atlantic. It’s telling they think all these issues are because of phones and not other aspects of society or something like the looming, ever present threat of climate change.

It’s basically The Economist lite at this point.