Establishing a norm around karma calculations being opt-in across the fediverse

Thanks!

The contours of this sort of issue on the fediverse often get mistaken, unfortunately. It is very much a "don't let perfect be the enemy of good" space, where establishing standards and acting to enforce those standards is the MO and relying on tech to provide guarantees without any need of human intervention being very much not the proposed solution.

The actions that people, IE us, can take are establishing norms through dialogue, allowing users to express their own desires, and allowing the federation system to do what it can to find the equilibrium between users' desires and the amount of connectivity people want.

It can be messy and boring, but that's what good community management comes down to in the end ... people sorting stuff out.

In this particular case, the proposal isn't to completely prevent a federated instance or a client from doing the calculation and presenting the information, but to get buy-in on the idea that we can "have nice things" without disrespecting people's needs, and then use our right of association (ie federation) to enforce what we care about.

You could create a license that makes it illegal to process information about the users in that way. Obviously, someone is gonna violate it, but all the respectable instances will at least not, since they usually don't operate out of reach of working jurisdictions.

Thanks for posting the userscript. I'm seeing lots of RES type features like this and hoping they'll be rolled into one at some point.

So you're a bot and I don't know why you're posting like that here ... but ... what you're saying doesn't make much sense.

• community subscriber numbers across the fediverse are available already in the sidebar
• the karma of a post, otherwise known as its score, equal to the upvotes minus the downvotes, is used to help the post rise to the top when sorting either by Top, Hot or Active.

So I've responded to some of your points below.

Overall, I have large difficulties with your reply, largely because, I'm sorry to say, I don't think you understand my proposal and come from a position I'd describe as "tech absolutism" that emphasises technology as the only viable solution and enforces the notion that we all need to accept the limitations of the technology to the point of discounting any value in any other kind of solution. Managing a social media ecosystem is not writing a program. Given your membership on programming.dev, it's reasonable to conclude that this bias is informed somewhat by what you know and are experienced with, and, equally, what you don't know and are not experienced with.

In short, I'm not sure you've made a single argument against proposal. And, as harsh as this is, until you reply in such a way that makes it clear that you actually understand the proposal and how it would work, I'm unlikely to engage in this discussion.

This is a Lemmy problem - not a fediverse problem.

No. What instances and platforms chose to do with each other's information is a federation problem. The technical capabilities and limitations of what agreements can or cannot be established by the protocol right now are not the end of the evolution of this technology. Engaging in what federation means at a cultural level is absolutely relevant to evolving the technology and practice. This sort of thing will almost always be a federation problem.

Other platforms on the fediverse use a like or dislike to mean different things. ...

Irrelevant and false equivalence. lemmy and kbin, the platforms relevant to this discussion, are almost identical platforms. Also, this isn't about likes/upvotes, it's about karma.

Suggesting that there is a flag on an individual’s profile that says whether karma is accumulated is one thing. Note that this information isn’t federated out and once it leaves the local instance there’s no way to determine that.

Yea, this is the proposal, I don't know why you're pushing it aside. Also, though karma is an aggregate that, as I understand, is calculated locally on any given instance ... you absolutely can tell if the aggregation is done on another instance ... just look!

Suggesting that a vote on another Lemmy instance (or platform) on a comment of someone who has disavowed karma on a different instance leads to defederation is a bit of an overreaction ...

Not what I'm suggesting at all. This isn't about votes, it's about the processing of votes in a particular way and the presentation of the result of that process. Again, fallacies here and at this point I'm not sure you understand what I'm talking about, which is a convention of respecting a user's expressed wishes on what is displayed about them personally as a condition of federation, not the prohibition of voting in any way. I do not understand how you arrived at this conclusion. At this point, honestly, I'm sorry to say, I'm suspicious of your intentions.

If you don’t want karma, don’t federate likes or dislikes outside of the instance and don’t accept likes or dislikes coming in. Accept that this will mean that the sort order of hot, top, and active will become less meaningful.

This is lazy tech absolutism. It is a position that is neither necessary, obvious, or fruitful.

Remember that there are other platforms out there and this reads a lot like a new kid on the block trying to set the rules for everyone else in the neighborhood who have been there for a much longer time.

Sorry to say ... but this made me LOL. Establishing norms over federation isn't a new idea I've just cooked up. Nor is this proposal trying to set any rules ... this is about respecting users choices and privacy, which is very much in the spirit of the fediverse. It's this sort of tech absolutism that is more likely to be the new kid on the block. Moreover, there are no rules, diversity is part of the point. But that doesn't preclude conventions, expectations and behaviours around establishing and enforcing these. In fact, that's how you get the diversity, and is part of the point.

I appreciate the instance based approach. And it is also probably the easiest from a tech perspective, just as downvotes are optional for an instance.

But it would mean that the user’s wish to not have to worry about their karma would not be respected across the fediverse, and I think that that’s an issue worth considering.

In your proposal, though their karma is not visible on their home instance, it could potentially be visible in every other instance, and therefore of as much concern whether presented on their instance or not.

I don’t see a major difference between a and b. The point is that the user can opt in or out of their karma ever being visible to anyone including themselves.

Truth is that the numbers for the calculation are always there, it’s just the sum of vote numbers. But what matters is whether it’s afforded in the UI and therefore whether users and their behaviour are mindful of it.

pretty much a part of the link aggregator style site’s core usefulness

I mean ... lemmy is doing just fine without it, and many here seem to be enjoying its absence, if they have even noticed it, so I'm not sure where you get this from. core usefulness seems like quite a stretch TBH.

The only other places I've experienced such a system are reddit and hackernews. On hackernews, its often belittled as irrelevant or something best ignored, IME at least.

On reddit, well, I don't think much positive came out of karma's effect there. Let me know if you've got counter arguments to that.

I wouldn’t want accounts that opt out of displaying karma to be able to vote on anything either

Interesting.

The main issue I have with this position though is that it seems to ignore and even underemphasise the importance of maintaining good culture through reporting and inter-personal engagement and moderation. If there's a bad faith actor, instead of relying on karma, I think a better way to go would be establish a culture of people engaging with them and explaining why their behaviour is unacceptable, then reporting if necessary, and moderation suspending/banning them if necessary after that. I'd prefer this because it establishes that maintaining "civility" is in many ways a people problem and not nearly as much of a tech problem as many are inclined to think. It also removes the superficiality of a simple numerical score, which can completely miss context and easily be gamed and stymie open conversaion for fear of being permanently punished by "bad karma".

Another way of putting this, is to ask by what means does someone earn the right to up/downvote? And I'd say by being a member here that hasn't been moderated/banned. That's because the core utility of a vote-score is to more easily sort and assess the feed and post comments and know how the community receives your posts. It's about the posts first, not the person.

If anyone wants to judge someone by their prior posts/comments, and the votes they got, you are by all means able to browse their history, where their votes are coupled with the context of their posts. But I'd say until they're moderated/banned, they're entitled to vote. In the case of a pathologically down voted user (IE, regularly, repeatedly, and substantially downvoted), I think that's a moderation issue and should be easily captured by moderation tools (it's like a single SQL query), where again, admins can and should incorporate the context into any decision they make.