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.
People might have to stand behind their opinions if they choose to voice them. The horror!
(Although the user/account is still basically anonymous 🤷♂️)
There’s a reason nobody has to publicly announce who their voting for in democratic countries, and that there’s no mechanism to check that. People can be grouped, ostracized, persecuted, canceled, or worse.
You don’t publicly announce it, but the government still knows it’s you who voted. Except in this case the site is open source. Knowing who voted is the only way to prevent vote manipulation.
In the US, all elections are done by secret ballot. The govt can see that you voted, but not who you voted for