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.
It is not reasonable to demand that every user that disagrees with a post publish their own counter-post. It’s excessive, inefficient, and is antithetical to how the fediverse functions. Post voting is the bare minimum of participation. If that’s still too “chilling”, this is simply the wrong forum for what you’re looking for, and trying to force the whole platform to bend to what you want it to be is just selfish.
I think our schism is philosophically intractable. I don’t see the fediverse as one single homogeneous space. I see it as many small pools of heterogeneous activities and people. That can cross pollinate, cross communicate, and cross collaborate.
You’re also asking the entire platform to bend to your will, to allow you to express your negativity wherever you like. I don’t think that’s sustainable for Lemmy either.
I agree that’s how the fediverse should operate, and you’re explicitly arguing to disallow this at your lone discretion. Your entire ethos that you’re touting is about excluding those not part of your personal group. That’s the exact opposite of open and collaborative.
No, I’m saying mods like you shouldn’t be allowed to abuse the openness of the fediverse while refusing to be subject to the same system everyone else is.
The public votes on the content of the forum. If that’s unacceptable to you, then that’s on you, not the forum.
Excluding those who don’t positively engage with the community. Only downvoting isn’t positive engagement. If every post to cars is downvoted by people of fuckcars, and every post to fuckcars is downvoted by people of cars… what does lemmy gain? They know they don’t like each other, no need for throwing hostility at each other.
A forum composed of people sharing a interest, I agree. But to use the cars illustrative example again, there is no value in having every cars post downvoted by the fuck cars people… it’s just noise, the members of the cars community are not served by it.
Update - I should add the moderators of small communities work hard to provide content, just letting negativity flow at them discourages lemmy from growing as every community starts small.
No. Don’t twist my words. I mean the fediverse is the forum. Your community is part of that forum, and is subject to the same public overview as every other community and post here. Demanding to be an exception is unacceptable. Regarding your example, if two communities are so hostile to one another that they can’t coexist in reasonable peace, then they should be excised from the platform, not given free reign to punish any perceived slight to wall off their club from the space they have been given access to.
Additionally, downvoting is absolutely positive engagement. It is the balancing hand in the user-based algorithm sites like this rely on. It is the low-demand option for users to interact without having to further mentally drain themselves by engaging with next iteration of the internet’s endless supply of trolls and bigots. Dissent is a critical part of collective conversations, and downvotes are a clean and efficient way to facilitate that.
We wont have much left to talk about.
The key word here, which i agree with, is CONVERSATIONS. downvotes are not a conversation, they are just negativity.
Anyway, we are talking in circles - I’m going to keep growing my communities which means weeding them of uninterested interlopers. I welcome you to spin up duplicates of any of my communities and grow real conversational engagement.
Conversation is more than your requirement arguments and discussion. It includes the ebb and flow of topics, memes, userbase, and, despite your refusal to accept it, up and down votes.
And I’ll say again since it bears repeating - you and your communities should still be answerable to the platform you are a part of. To demand special treatment and one-way isolation spits in the face of the rest of the platform.
we fundamentally disagree on what a community is and the value of having safe spaces for niche interests.
Your idea of a “safe space” is parasitic and harmful to the very concept of federation, it’s “value” just a mirage of toxic positivity.