Ah, I see the point there. That a new instance with a different UI could put them up.

I'm certainly no tech expert, but if it's about the API, then how did third-party Reddit apps work with it? The votes definitely synced between different versions of Reddit, could a third-party Reddit app have been made that showed votes publicly? If not, what was the system behind that, and could it work here? Again, no idea, there may be a very good reason why what I'm thinking wouldn't work, but I dunno what it would be.

Well, I'm sure Reddit tracked who voted on what behind the scenes too, sites have to or else you can just vote multiple times on multiple devices/apps/browsers. I'm not worried about that really, since it's unavoidable. Making them public is my issue.

I see where you're coming from, but on the flip side, I think it empowers the bad-faith trolls who have way too much time and energy to get into fights. On Reddit, if I see someone just being a general asshole, I'll downvote and move on. If that person can see that I've done that, I'm not gonna feel as comfortable doing that, lest they retaliate somehow.

You could turn it around and say that it empowers non-asshole users to fight back as well, but the assholes tend to have more energy to get into fights, that's part of the reason why they're being assholes online in the first place.

I can tell you I've absolutely never wished Reddit votes were shared knowledge. Even if it would occasionally be useful information, it's just not worth it for me.

I'm still figuring out how this works. Does Lemmy also make your votes public? It doesn't seem to me like it does (though I may be wrong) and that's part of the fediverse too, no?

I mainly used downvotes on trolls and other bad-faith comments, people just being purposefully annoying in the comments. Exactly the kind of people I don't want to engage with, just downvote and move on.

Hmm, yeah, I don't like this at all. I can see some benefits but I really don't want to have to worry about what I'm voting on. If I downvote some lunatic I don't want them being able to harass me about it. And it feels way too social-media-y for me. This could be a dealbreaker for a lot of people if there isn't at least a way to opt out.