I get why something like that would be implemented from a privacy perspective, but randomizing it is by far the worst approach as (like you have just shown) it manipulates legitimate fediverse statistics tools.
In my opinion, it would make far more sense to either report all of the counts as 0 or simply return a 403 Forbidden response.
@dansup I don't think joking about this is a good idea. This should not be a matter of discourse, but rather trying to find a solution that at least most people are happy with instead of fighting with each other.
It's not even enabled by default, and looks to me like an experimental feature that is just starting to be tested and isn't quite ready for a stable release yet.
The privacy concern is real, and valid, but I would focus on the approach taken. That's where the discussion should be.
@hexaheximal They just made other fediverse stats counts useless, thankfully FediDB is curated, so I was able to swiftly prevent them from inflating their stats.
@dansup@hexaheximal You seem to still think this was done in order to inflate stats. Yet the commit shows a very believable explanation that shows this is likely not the case.
While it is not good for the stats and you should absolutely prevent instances using the settings from skewing the stats, I'm not sure why you seem to be still interpreting the situation uncharitably.
@dansup@virtuous_sloth Not necessarily. I think that they just tried something without realizing the massively chaotic impact it would have.
...I say this as someone who has done something here without realizing the massively chaotic impact it had, although this probably isn't even *that* bad.