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.
At first I agreed with the general “whatever” sentiment. It has some important implications, however.
It discourages people from voting if they’re concerned about other people seeing their activity. This could result in a lower quality of scoring for posts.
Good. A type of voting it discourages is using multiple accounts to game the system. People on lemmy have already been caught doing this and quickly shunned.
If you think that someone will judge you negatively for your vote - then do not make that vote. That is the entire point. And I like it.
You do see how it could have a chilling effect on engagement if the “someone” judging you negatively for your vote is, say, a repressive government, right? And what’s the point of a social network without engagement?
Exactly.
“I see you up votes posts about my election rival… see you soon!”
“Dear child, I see you up voted LGBT content. Let’s talk about your sins, then try some electroshock”