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2 months agoDo you mean the concept of up- / downvoting posts and comments in order to determine a suitable order, or do you mean the tally of all your up- / downvotes being displayed as a number on your profile.
As for the up- / downvoting, while it isn’t perfect, and it sometimes encourages people to only upvote things they agree with rather than being accurate, it is a pretty good metric to get relevant posts and comments to the top.
And as for the numerical tally… It’s easily ignored. I didn’t particularly mind it on Reddit, but I also don’t mind its absence on Lemmy.
Seeing the number go up on my individual posts gives my monkey brain enough of a dopamine boost
My read on this is not as much of a cynical one. I believe the point of surveillance is simply to protect the institution of the state.
The goal of the state is ultimately the continued existence of that state. Otherwise there really is not that much purpose to the state. Surveillance is a tool to suppress actors (read: terrorists) who might want to undermine that institution.
In order to determine who benefits from the continued existence of the state, it mostly depends which state you are talking about.
A state like China exists almost solely to benefit those in power, and thus the surveillance state is used to suppress the citizenry. But a Western democracy, while it also to a certain extent protects money and power, also exists to to benefit the general population.