

Since everyone else has already answered your main question, it’s also worth pointing out that all of your upvotes and downvotes are mostly public due to the nature of the Fediverse and needing to publish that info.
There are ways to mitigate that, such as using PieFed and setting your votes to only count locally, or to only federate to “trusted” instances. Otherwise, another way to handle it is to use a “voting only” account and don’t make any comments with it.













Surfing. Buy the gear once, and you’re good to go. You can also learn how to do some minor repairs and buy the gear used. If all else fails, you can learn how to shape a board yourself, or just go bodysurfing (fins strongly recommended).