Against. As Lena has indicated, this does not require spinning up a full instance and admin account, but just to spin up a copy of LemVotes, which is open source. Easier than that, I've also read that votes are available without admin rights through queries to the Lemmy API. Even easier, the votes are also already public through the *bins. Just make an account on them.
I understand the use of having a small hurdle to dissuade people, I regularly build them into my scripts at work so people can't accidentally break shit with them. But my point is, removing our instance from LemVotes does not raise that hurdle to any significant degree.
This is a core limitation of ActivityPub. Votes must be sent with username attached for federation to work properly. The data is already out there. Any ActivityPub system that doesn't make them public is just doing so on the front end. It's set dressing, not actual voting privacy.
I don't like that it works this way, but I've chosen to accept it as the cost to be part of the Fediverse, to be uncensorable.
If you want privacy, the path is the same it always has been: rotate accounts regularly.
As far as I'm aware, the only true workaround is in piefed (I think it's piefed at least) where a hidden account with a randomized name is created with your real account, and the hidden one's name is attached to your votes instead of the real account. So it would require your own instance admin to see the link in vote and identity. Or basic levels of observation skills to connect the person posting negative replies is the random username also downvoting.
I also don't like the idea of even being able to opt out. It creates an entirely false sense of security and privacy, and could be seen as a signal that our instance doesn't intend to participate in the wider fediverse transparently and in good faith.
Was a full, but short, novel that I think was summer reading: The Chocolate Wars.
Not traumatizing as much as just a shit message. Don't quietly try to opt out of what the public wants, don't rock the boat, or you'll be executed publicly as a spectacle while your peers cheer.
Kid doesn't want to participate in his high school chocolate selling fundraiser, bunch of other things happen in between, and then his classmates organize a rigged boxing match between him and the biggest school bully where they all cheer while the bully beats the main character to death. And it just hard cuts, ends there.
What a garbage book.