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.
Good point, it’s really easy to categorize different users by their voting habits alone. There’s actually a platform that does this called meneane.net, and it isn’t like it has burned down completely. It is more data available for marketing or worse in regards to Big Data, but when available to the users, it does allow you to see who’s going on downvoting sprees and see from what bubble they are coming from. In Meneame, some people have resorted to using separate accounts just to downvote from.
Besides that, it’s not that bad, just imagine yourself making a comment that says “I’m downvoting you”, and honestly, everyone should try being able to view that information.
I’m downvoting you. You point out a good example of why it really is that bad and then go on to say it’s not that bad. I disagree and think it’s pretty bad.