People who leave cults know the below the surface workings of the cult. -They are a threat to the cult and its mission.
Shunning is a technique used by cults. Cults lure people in initially with the love and acceptance they didn't feel from outside the cult. Shunning strikes to the core of these people as they return to their previous state, actually often worse.
Actions can go beyond shunning though.
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Guilt and Fear: Cults may attempt to instill a sense of guilt and fear in members about leaving suggesting dire consequences.
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Character Assassination: Spreading false information or rumors to discredit the party leaving.
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Stalking: Stalking former members to intimidate them into returning or to prevent them from speaking out.
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Threats: Verbal or written threats are often used to scare former members into silence. (wait til Lemmy admins see this shit! -for example)
The intimidation can go way beyond these, but these are pertinent to our community. A community for people recovering from a cult and trying to caution others.
The vote brigading is all tightly timed and an administrator could (if they wanted to take the time) analyze the voting in the data base and accurately determine what accounts are guilty based on the data. -Yes; I've ran a website before. Natural down-votes from subscribers won't fall into a tightly wadded amount that we're getting like that. (And people with nefarious intentions wouldn't generally contribute to the user count). Lots of subscribers just ignore the voting, and bots may be involved. Users don't need to be subscribed to follow (just go directly to the community, use a feed reader, etc).
If you look back at older posts, we have a great community here. We just have a lot more accounts exploiting the lack of rules, and software maturity.
Maybe I'm missing something, but that's my perspective.