this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2024
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Ok, yeah, theoretically.
But we're talking about putting voting info into the UI for anyone to see. Not highly motivated and skilled bad actors.
And the "we should not make it available for the public at large because it will lead to abuse" is also theoretical.
Anyway, I'm already on record saying that I don't like the voting system and that we should get rid of it altogether. Voting on content used to be about collective curation, not a constant popularity contest.
I'm also on record saying that we need to stop relying on systems that only give us the illusion of privacy and depend on the software developers for culture shaping.
If making the vote public gets people to be exposed to these fundamental issues of the current design, and leads us to search for better solutions, then I'm all for it.
It's not theoretical to se how people consistently behave when there's less friction for toxic behavior. You should look into it if you're not already aware of the very predictable negative outcomes that stem from removing those frictions.
I mean in the specific case of "giving vote visibility to everyone will cause more harassment based on who-voted-on-what". It's theoretical because this has not been implemented yet.
Except that it plainly obvious that it's a reduction in friction for doing so and therefore will increase the behavior.
I've addressed this in another comment. At first, it's quite likely that we'd see an increase in behavior. But the way to correct this would be by reporting "serial downvoters" and brigaders to moderators, which could then be empowered to enforce "don't downvote just because you disagree" guidelines.
Hackernews, for all its faults, does this very well. Their moderation team is quite small, yet it rarely falls into screaming matches between users. Their guidelines are clear and let people understand what is/is not acceptable. Mods are rarely seen threatening to ban someone, but often calling out bad behavior and simply asking people to stop doing whatever they are doing before it escalates further.