this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2026
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Yes we do. Community mods and instance admins can view votes on any comment or post to try to cut down on this. Downvote spammers are currently one of the biggest problems on the fediverse.
Anyone can see who votes on what.
No they can't, only admins or mods.
Lemvotes.com
We block that spying tool, so it doesn't work on lemmy.ml . See here.
Security via obscurity🙄
See the linked thread.
I did! Most of the arguments against basically boil down to 'make it harder for the average user to do this'. In addition to the unequal access to information, sites like lemvote demonstrate how easy it will be for the average user to bypass the imaginary technical barrier. Sure, you may block it now, but as the Threadiverse grows so will the number of sites and such that do so. Even a browser extension ala RES. Even without the whack-a-mole issue, it's only a matter of time before somebody sets up such an utility for public access with an obfuscated instance that can't be easily blocked.
"Publicly listing at the public info that is transmitted on public channels, which is not encrypted and fully viewable with other fediverse platforms is spyware" holy shit .ml is pathetic.
Once a moderator has viewed the votes, and identified a downvote spammer, what happens next? Is it possible to ban a user from a community just for downvote spamming?
Yes, you can give a reason when you ban a user yes.
Though how do you ban a user who's only downvoted in a community? From what I can tell, the ban option only appears on posts and comments.
is the hexbear solution viable for the whole thing?
You mean allowlist federation? Depends on who you're federated with. If you're federated with any larger server it's still going to be an issue.
I added a site setting to reject federated votes that'll be in the next release.
I think they meant disabling downvotes altogether.
Ah, yep that'd do it.
It is only a partial solution imo, I had downvoted disabled on vegan theory club but people would still downvote the posts and it would federate to all the other servers except mine and I couldn't moderate it. We were targeted by shut ins and the threads looked bad on other instances and I couldn't see or ban the users lol. I guess rejecting federated votes would help but then there would be no federated upvotes either.
I split them out into 4 options: post, comment, upvote and downvotes
You could make the community local only, but that would very much limit its reach.
yeah i meant just killing downvotes by default