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.
And nothing of value will be lost.
So you don’t oppose community mods responding like that?
Of course it’s shitty of them, but I wouldn’t lose sleep getting banned from a random community I don’t care about.
Well fair enough, although I do think (and I know this isn’t the same here specifically) that it isn’t shitty to ban a metal-hater from a metal music community for downvoting everything.