Russian here. This is a super old claim from our government and is a common source of jokes, it’s even called “Cheburnet” (from Cheburashka) colloquially, nobody really treats such claims seriously. Last time Russian government tried to influence internet was when they struggled to ban telegram for several years, and ended up giving up, endorsing it, and moving their official resources to it.
All of these are strictly Ukrainian though. Following some Russian sources as well would make sense to get fuller picture.
(I’m not providing examples though as I don’t really follow either. Several months into the war I gave up trying to sort propaganda from something substantial)
If you ask me, I’d make upvotes/downvotes public overall. Always hated how on reddit some miserable people downvote lots of innocent stuff, hiding behind their anonymity.
Lemmy & Reddit are public discussion platforms, everything you do here should be public, it’s not like you use them to store private information.
Pretty sure it’s China, or it’s a very niche thing from homosexual communities. I’m Russian and never heard of this