chris

But they can't fingerprint you on your home instance. If you don't use threads they will have a hard time.

Meta can't track your IP if you post from your home instance. They don't have access to that.

Your idea assumes that you can just change the protocol. The ActivityPub protocol is developed under the W3C. If you just change something you are no longer compatible with other services.

If that is a solution you'd need to change the ActivityPub specification. You are more than welcome to submit your idea.

Also, there’s way too much trust in instances. Like, one person could easily make a post on lemmy.world, go on their personal instance, and just give themselves, say, 2000 upvotes.

I'd first have to create 2000 users, then I'd have to send 2000 upvotes. And then I'd get blocked by all instances.

Instances should have their own settings on what instances are allowed to keep a local copy.

This is also not compatible with the ActivityPub spec but even if it were you'd win nothing because as soon as you fetch the post it is still on the server.

It seems you have a few options:

1. Put in the work yourself and change it.
2. Finde someone who puts in their work to change it
3. Accept that this is how it works
4. Leave the fediverse

Option 1. has the highest chance of getting your changes but option 2. might work as well. I wish you luck if you choose these options.

Option 3. seems unlikely from your comments.

Option 4. is maybe the easiest option for you then. And I say that without wanting you gone. I'd like you to stay but I don't think the fediverse can accommodate your demands.

I'd like to point out a flaw with your analogy though: if you go to a restaurant you pay the people to make what you want. The Lemmy Devs do this for free for you. A better analogy is going to a potluck without bringing anything and being unhappy about the lack of steak.

I think the problem is that people post things without informing themselves. I don't know how to change that. People don't read disclaimers. How do you make them know these things? You can't put big red warning labels everywhere. People need to inform themselves.

Putting the onus on me is a shitty thing to do

You are the person who has a problem with that and you mentioned FOSS. It is easy to complain. FOSS gives you the tools to change things. But you have to put in the work. You are the one putting the burden the change something to your liking on others instead of doing to yourself.

Obfuscating user IDs via a hash or something would seem like the way to make it work. I’m not a coder, so I have no idea if I’m talking nonsense on that front. And whilst still not an ideal solution, but sharing non-private votes with your own instance admin and have them share only the total vote count with other instances is another solution. That way you need only trust your instance admin, which is choosable and can also be yourself.

Both of your ideas are not compatible with ActivityPub as far is I can see. So you first need to change the specification and then make everyone adopt the specification. Before that any change would make your software incompatible with the rest of fediverse which is counter the idea.

And all of that because people could be mad about a downvote. I am an instance admin. I was downvoted before. I never even thought about looking up who downvoted me. I know people are different but to be honest if someone looks it up and harasses you then you block them. And I really can't imagine that your vote on a post with a pseudonym is really a very useful datapoint for anyone.

I agree that these things have to be communicated better but I don't even know how we would make people aware of this. No one reads disclaimers.

Where? Not on my instance.

You mean it is worse here on lemmy with the unknown number of people who can see your votes if they are interested then on [BigTech-Site-X] where an unknown number of people can see your votes if they are interested? If you or someone else you know has a nice idea how to make votes possible without the information of who did it, then you are very welcome to submit your idea to the W3C for consideration. ActivityPub is an open standard and everyone can contribute.

If someone has a case it is a good idea to apply the laws. But you first have to find you that laws have been broken and by whom.

But on the Fediverse you literally can only see what you put out in the public. Your votes, your posts, your faves. That is your action in public. It is not federated what you look at. There are no trackers here that profile you. It is just your real interactions that count.

Maybe there is a way to keep you votes hidden but there sure is no way to keep your posts hidden. The whole point of federation is to distribute your post to the other instances. You want eat your cake and have it too. You want to post publicly but stay in control of the message. You are not better off using BigTech because there someone can scrape your data as well. And you don't even know to how many parties your data is sent without your knowledge. There is no privacy in social media.