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.
So other instances outside the instance your user exist on, has access to this? Which means everyone, as anyone can create an instance?
Yes, I installed a Lemmy server my own self, there is no screening, approval, or even a “terms of use” on the signup page. This is the “wild west” of social media. And some of the claims on the GitHub project page such as “full delete” are an overreach, as it has no footnote that federated servers do not have to comply with the delete of your replicated votes/comments/posts/profile
Not to mention that even good faith efforts can fail. We see that server lag and reliability impacts posts, comments and upvotes across instances. The same goes for purge requests. If my instance misses the message from lemmy.world to delete or purge a post, it won’t happen on my instance. There’s no after the fact reconciliation.
Wow… I mean, I feel like creating 15 users across many instances and just using them at random. I dont want that kind of insight available. Though I probably already gave all that on Reddit. You’re welcome AI!!