A few people in the other thread assumed that it was required to fork the code to disable those filters. That’s not the case, the filters can be configured, and are off by default.
To hide the reputation system, here’s a line of CSS that admins can add in the admin area to hide it for every user
That CSS line can also be used by any user wanting to hide the score at the user level.
Yeah. You know, Shadow Profiles? Datasets on users collected for the purpose of control and manipulation, basically the equivalent to back when McCarthynism and the FBI had a “dossier” on you. It’s not even that old, Facebook was caught doing it in a big scandal and pretty much every corporate since then (Reddit uses it for shadowbanning Fediverse mentions, etc).
That’s not what’s being done at all here. It’s not that deep. It’s just a number based on downvotes received/given.