Was recently banned from a whole bunch of DB0 communities for, as best as I can gather, downvoting once when I viewed by All (potentially accidentally while scrolling).
Important notes:
- I don't use scripts.
- I don't mass-downvote Communities. If I see a post I generally don't like when browsing All, I may downvote one post, block the Community and move on.
- Some of the communities I was banned from don't have any posts in them so I wouldn't have been able to downvote anything.
- Of all of these Communities, in my history I downvoted one post in one of them. Voting in this manner is not vote manipulation. It's quite literally a feature of the platform and as a mod of another Community, I would consider it pretty good etiquette.
- One of my bans reads "Appeal Granted, not a brigading member" but I'm still banned.
- I don't troll.
WTF is going on here?
EDIT - Updated Info from the conversation below: In the initial image, you can see two "ban waves."
The 10 bans three months ago stem from a single downvote in one Community. It was @Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com See here: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/34853477
I was called out by name for a single downvote and culled from a score of Communities I did not participate in by them.
The other bans from two months ago are from four total downvotes over a 10-month timeframe in one Community.
I have also stated in this thread that I don't have issues with AI-gen images, but there are shoddy ones and well-done ones.
EDIT 2: Now unbanned from the ten Communities listed as "3 months ago" in my initial image, but have been banned from three more because of this thread with the reason given being "self-proclaimed anti-AI brigader" which are two things I didn't claim to be. God dammit Lemmy...
You don't have to like anything, but consistent downvoting like this without any other kind of participation is indistinguishable from targeted downvote harassment, and isn't consistent with your claims of blocking.
It's perfectly distinguishable unless you're trying real hard to misinterpret what I said. As a Mod of a small Community myself, here's the difference in downvotes:
Bad Faith Actor: Sees a post or a whole Community they don't like. Goes in and systematically downvotes a bunch of stuff on purpose. Topics, responses... everything. Downvotes because they hate the community and everything it stands for. See 50 downvotes in your Community in one day? That's these fuckers. Ban them. They are assholes and are vote manipulating. Probably ban them from related Communities for vote manipulation.
Normal User: (--> We are here) May or may not comment in YOUR Community, especially if it's image-based. Sees a single post that they don't like out of thousands they see daily and downvotes it. Several months later, it may happen again. This is expected behaviour and is how an upvote / downvote system functions. Don't ban these or you're the asshole.
Brigade Users: A coordinated attack to downvote or spam a Community stemming from some other place. They downvote everything and often post garbage. Ban these people. They are assholes and are vote manipulating. Probably ban them from related Communities for vote manipulation if not trying to seek an instance ban.
Lurker: (The overwhelming majority of users are this) Indistinguishable from a Normal user in votes, but may not comment. May be an alt or bot account. Be wary. Check their post history to see if they're real people. If real, leave 'em alone. If empty, use your discretion. Don't ban from related Communities.
Other: Downvotes accidentally when scrolling sometimes. These happen. May appear as a Lurker or a Normal User. Don't ban these or you're the asshole.
Hope that helps!
Yeah, you make really good points, but we get also get the kind of bad faith actor that browses all and downvote community content whenever they see it.
Just one more for the road since I think the thread is dying down and I don't like leaving things on a negative note.
It takes some bravery to dip into a thread discussing issues and I wanted to say thanks for clearing what you did up. I may not agree, but I can understand it at least. It's important to remember the human on the other end. Moderating can be hard, and so can finding the line you feel you should walk. Thanks for running a Community on Lemmy. Shit's not easy sometimes.