It’s honestly a big downside. I can see it being useful for admins on their own instances to detect brigades or vote manipulation coming from different servers, but I don’t like that they are public, because it could discourage people from voting honestly on topics where they could potentially be harassed for engaging
I’ve never seen that before. I wonder if it’s an instance dependent setting?
It is limited to admins
And anyone can be an admin. You can just make an instance and appoint yourself an admin. So in practice it’s not limited to anybody.
Having a look at your screenshot again, upvotes are indeed visible (they are using Kbin too for every user).
Example for this thread: https://fedia.io/m/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world/t/583932/What-does-Lemmy-do-better-than-Reddit/favourites
Is it the same for downvotes?
Yes
It’s honestly a big downside. I can see it being useful for admins on their own instances to detect brigades or vote manipulation coming from different servers, but I don’t like that they are public, because it could discourage people from voting honestly on topics where they could potentially be harassed for engaging