I have no idea if this is technically feasible within Lemmy’s current framework, but I was wondering - has Voyager ever considered adding viewer counts (or “view metrics”) to posts and comments on user profile pages?
For example, perhaps something like:
👁️ _____ Views
Similar to how Reddit shows post view metrics.
It’d be a great way to get a better sense of engagement beyond just upvotes and comments, and could help users understand which of their posts are being seen, even if they don’t receive that many interactions.
Would love to know if this has been discussed before or if it might be possible to implement in the future.
I feel like metrics are just something to chase and encourage behavior that runs counter to both honesty and value. If you wouldn’t post something for ten views, I don’t want to see what you’d post for a thousand. Worse is if someone refrains from posting on boards or regarding topics because of low engagement.
I understand the curiosity about what one’s reach truly is. But let’s say a board routinely gets 10k views on articles, now that’s a reason someone might choose to target that board with spam or propaganda. The insidious thing about social media is chasing clout. The fewer metrics we have for that shit, the better
IMO.
Good lord, no.
Why do you care about “engagement”?
So that people know how many people have seen their post/comment.
Ie, a viewcount of 5,963 would tell the user that many other users have seen it, even if there is low to no interaction.
It doesn’t feel like they’re just screaming into the void.
I cannot see any benefit to that. Can you buy anything with that number?
Hey it’s technically possible! Most lemmy instances do not proxy images, so you can embed a sneaky tracking pixel in your post, and collect every time the image is loaded, and also get demographics for it! /neg
Nope, never! Reddit is about money and users data, we don’t do that here. That’s why I was saying we should not bring Reddit stuff over here.
