The mod banning these users is the same mod who made the posts they downvoted. This is mod abuse, turning the downvote button into an auto-self-ban button.
The message is “If you disagree with me, you will be banned”
Monitoring and banning users for using lemmy as intended to signal boost your opinion should be grounds to have all mod privileges removed. This behaviour undermines the integrity of the server and the wider fediverse.
Downvotes are not censorship in any sense of the term.
They certainly are censorship in the sense that it reduces other people’s ability to see that content.
Can you blame censorship when you’ve voluntarily decided to participate in a network that has a voting for visibility system?
I’m not blaming anyone I’m just saying it meets the definition of censorship.
That is not at all a reasonable definition of censorship.
Censorship is “the suppression or prohibition of [media] that is considered obscene, politically unacceptable or a threat to security” according to Oxford dictionary.
How is downvoting content with the intent to make it less visible to other users not a form of suppression?
The sine qua non of censorship is the authoritarian component missing from your definition. A moderator or administrator removing an article from a forum is censorship. A user demonstrating their disapproval of that article within the forum doesn’t qualify as censorship.
The Oxford definition is not wrong, just incomplete.
Because that’s social media we’re talking about. It’s an algorithm. There’s no central authority. The visibility of a post is chosen democratically and freely.
Censorship is removing and banning content. Censorship isn’t bad anyways when there’s a good reason (ex: hate speech)
Anyone that wants to see said content can still freely do it. Censorship would be abusive moderation, like banning someone because they don’t agree with you, essentially removing their freedom of speech. Or actively removing political opponents like lemmy.ml, blahaj…
Well, as I just showed in the definition, censorship can also be suppression of content without banning. If the government says, you can’t show X content before 9PM on television that is a form of censorship (even though anyone that wants to see that content can still freely see it)
Hate speech should be removed by mods or admins