I woke up today, to a public comment in a Lemmy community asking a series of tagged accounts why they had downvoted certain posts

I thought that reactions to posts and comments are anonymous and now I don’t really know what to feel about Lemmy any more.

In this case I had downvoted a poster because of its design, but was confronted publicly for being racist because the person assumed that I downvoted the message on the poster

EDIT: changed the title from “How” to “Why” because it broke rule nr 5 about it being a support question

  • Andy_R@feddit.uk
    1·
    6 days ago

    Yes.

    I don’t know of any clients that publicly show it, but the information is sent out as a json that can be read by anyone setup to receive them.

    • utopiah@lemmy.world
      1·
      5 days ago

      Thanks for the clarification but is it for non-local DMs only or even local DMs and if so why?

      • Andy_R@feddit.uk
        1·
        1 day ago

        Hmm I’m not sure if it affects local.

        Because they’re basically the same as a post or comment, it’s how the fediverse works. They get sent out to anyone listening, and whoever is listening directs it where to go i.e. a community or users inbox. So all instances can update with a new post to their users who are subbed. In theory the DM would get ignored by everyone else who isn’t the target, but one could easily set it up to not do so.