My first experience with a pc was Windows 3 also! My parents business computers. I remember playing Jazz Jackrabbit and skifree on it. I was very young. I did get to use bare DOS tho from a hand-me-down computer that only booted into DOS. I’m not afraid of a little Console/Terminal work. I actually prefer it for some tasks. Like Arch’s pacman is SO fast.

We’re the generation that learned to troubleshoot bc we had to. If we wanted to play that shiny new game or app, we had to actually get it running first.

This wouldnt be as much of as issue if Lemmy had better support for connecting with other instances and their communities.

That account still has to be linked to a real person, and not doxing yourself circles back to using social media responsibly. Social media is just that, Social media. You cant swim in the pool and not get wet. The ways in which your describing it being abused are ways in which every facet of every social media can be abused. So if one is so concerned about it, why even bother using social media.

What stuff? Lol what their profile voted for? Thats not going to dox anything like a location or address. If Seth Rogan did an ama and upvoted a 420 post literally nobody would be surprised. Again, voting opinions aren’t a privacy concern. Y’all are making a fuss about nothing.

Okay so say a bad actor gets this information, and wants to use it maliciously. If they goto the users instance and attack the user in posts and comments, then they likely get banned. All this data links back to arbitrary usernames. I dont understand where the actual “threat” is in this data being semi-public.

Well you’re not a product unless a lemmy instance controller figures a way to become profitable from selling your data.

But realistically i don’t see how this is an issue. There isnt any ads on any instance that im aware of, which is what it would be used for, to serve you more personalized ads to your lemmy account. If an instance runner knows that your specific account voted a certain way on any post or comment, how could they even use that information to profit or degrade your experience here. Its just garbage data 🤷‍♂️

I couldn’t happily imagine such a future personally. Thankfully its possible to block instances without having to pay for the privilege.