Edit: obligatory explanation (thanks mods for squaring me away)…
What you see via the UI isn’t “all that exists”. Unlike Reddit, where everything is a black box, there are a lot more eyeballs who can see “under the hood”. Any instance admin, proper or rogue, gets a ton of information that users won’t normally see. The attached example demonstrates that while users will only see upvote/downvote tallies, admins can see who actually performed those actions.
Edit: To clarify, not just YOUR instance admin gets this info. This is ANY instance admin across the Fediverse.
Wait so I can randomly connect to this lemmy instance sql server and send a query to get that information?
You can’t connect to an arbitrary instance but you CAN create your own instance and audit anything that gets federated to it.
That makes sense. Thanks!
Yeah I didn’t see a confirmation if this is accessing a Lemmy server they control or not. I think this could be an awkward stain. It would be nice if instance owners could confidentially tell their users everything accessible via API is also accessible via gui so we all see clearly what’s accessible.
…or just ask any kbin user, we can see up and downvotes through the UI. Upvotes are federated, we see everything. Downvotes - more complicated - we won’t get the full picture for a post hosted on Lemmy, but we still see downvotes by kbin users.