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.
I prefer platforms without voting buttons for this reason. People are treating the up and down arrows like “punish buttons” because of the result of pushing the button. Older forum and imageboard style platforms did not have voting. You couldn’t just push a button to register your disagreement, you had to actually make a comment if you didn’t like something, and other users could judge the quality of your response.
In addition, your identity was often only relevant to a single thread, which was on a single topic, so your opinions weren’t portable or traceable. There were no profiles, so other users weren’t able to use your comments on different threads to try to accuse you of intellectual inconsistency. This led to more complex discussions because people are complex.
Furthermore, on a platform like the one we’re on, if enough people click the “punish button” then the platform makes the comment less visible, requiring an extra step to be able to see it. The purpose of voting buttons is to shape discourse into what’s most agreeable, and homogenize it into what’s agreeable to the most people. Complaining about users “misusing” the voting buttons is something that happened a lot on reddit in the early years. People didn’t realize that they were working as designed.
I see where you are coming from now, I misunderstood your intent. I took what you meant as “its good to use these buttons because that’s why the platform has them,” which I disagree with every which way!
But you were actually saying the design of the platform causes the behavior, the platforms hurt discourse more than individual users who’s understanding (or misunderstanding) of how a vote button is supposed to be used is an ambiguity that is inherent to the platform. Which, yes I agree with that also, and it is a better point to make than which user is vicious or virtuous in using the platform.
I make similar criticisms often about structural basis for social movements, but admittedly I have a blind spot for tech platforms. Not because I’m bad with tech, but because I’m pretty good with it. I do tend to think of these platforms as neutral, but that’s more of a bias than a product of analysis. I’d like to unlearn the bias.
You seem pretty advanced in your understanding, is this something that you’ve just thought about, or are you in community, or educating yourself by other means? I could use a little of that in my own work, as I am aware of this bias but still wasting time and energy because of it
Anyway, holy shit its a conversation if either of us had the attitude of “downvote and go” then I’d have missed your actual intention. Another tendency of online discourse is for people to take the dimmest possible interpretation of others opinions. I guess I also fall in this trap, at least around certain topics
I think really most folks don’t realize how easy it is to design a platform that provokes real discussions and engages users but nobody would go there. Casual users are coming here for enjoyment, not engagement, and they don’t want to see anything that rubs them the wrong way. And we aren’t even talking about algorithmically driven feeds which learn from your behavior and give you content that you’re most likely to interact with, like Facebook, which can actually be dangerous.
These are just my observations. I was here before the internet talking on BBSs. I don’t know why all these people are here, to be honest. When I started out it was just nerds talking to each other. I wonder if people would participate in a discussion board that held all posts and responses for 24 hours before making them public to give people time to reflect on what they just said.
We don’t see each other as people anymore. This is complicated by advanced AI enabled LLMs driven by commercial and political interests, so you don’t even know at this point whether you’re talking to an actual person. But this is what we have now so this is what I use. Listservs were the first great platform I remember enjoying, and I wouldn’t mind going back to that. Usenet was also good.
I just think the days of the average person being able to go on the internet and just say whatever they want, relatively anonymously and with no real oversight and no consequences or accountability for what happens afterwards are coming to an end. At that point hopefully we’ll see less inflammatory politics and engagement bait as more and more people move on, and go back to whatever they were doing before they started doing this, maybe watching cable TV or going to sporting events.