Skavau

Yeah, I am just speaking as a general principle - not whatever happened here. Mass downvoting isn't at all observed like that anyway. It's the behaviour from some individual accounts that repeatedly downvote different threads from a specific community. So you'd be looking at habits across threads.

If in my community (for instance) someone was to come in and just downvote the entire first page, I'd probably ban them because that would just be a crude attempt to target it. And again: downvoting like that is worse for smaller communities trying to grow.

Anyone banning for downvoting is incredibly petty or thin skinned, just my observation. If it wasn't for the instance shutting down, it would have made a good post on yptb. Reading other comment threads on this post support the thin skinned theory imho. I just happened to be browsing all when I found the post. Looking at my subs, I wasn't subscribed to any community there.

What about in the context of mass-downvoters? I can't speak for Dubvee, but mass-downvoters do exist - and they can be corrosive for smaller communities trying to grow, as early downvotes of threads can effectively kill them. These are accounts that seem to primarily downvote and don't actually interact on-site, and have no real pattern to it. This kind of response has little to do with sensitivity.

I already posted a news article on this lol, but like 20 minutes ago. I'll remove mine and keep yours up for poster variety.

Otherwise, Twisted Metal is coming out at the end of the month.

There's already one (1920s-1930s Weimar)

Babylon Berlin.

Eh, I think trying to get an entire instance defederated because of a grievance with a particular community there that they won't back you up on might well be more effort personally.

On the one hand, this is one of the most interesting historical time period and places of the modern era.

On the other hand, we have Babylon Berlin - and its authentically German.

I mean, yeah, some instances will have rules that community moderators must abide by. In that case you could have some recourse. Then if they still back them, you could go on a wide "defederate this instance" campaign!

But at a certain point, is it worth the energy?

I mean I'm quite liberal on it. I know a number of users in my community that downvote a bit, but those users also actually post and have some interest in the subject matter - so I accept it.

But there really are accounts that have zero posts but downvote EVERYTHING.

In regards to people piling on and using downvotes in a form of a brigade attack, similar to review bombing pieces of media... While I dislike this profoundly and find it enormously toxic, it is still within the realm of public expression. If one means to silence it, one means to suppress the freedom for others to express themselves as both individuals and as a group. As much as I find it despicable or toxic in a lot of contexts, I can't bring myself to justify the act of banning this form of expression in showing discontent. Moderators of communities, particularly with particular topic focuses will need to ban people to deal with spam, abusive behaviour, trolling, off-topic conduct - to ultimately maintain the focus of their community.

It absolutely is in the form of public expression, but if I see someone downvoting all the posts on a community I run - and they never contribute, I will use the powers granted to me as a steward of that community to ban them. Mass-downvoting can be a problem for small communities as it can bury threads.

As for the rest of your post, I simply don't believe it's my responsibility in the communities I run, that have particular purposes, to play house to toxic and otherwise repulsive people with behavioural issues because of the societal impacts of social media engendering loneliness and maladaptive behaviour as a type of cope. Most communities will have a topic-focus and need to ban people just on that basis. Or for spam. Or for trolling. Or for abusive behaviour.

Are niche Communities correct for banning anyone who downvotes?

I'll just speak to this point generally.

Depends on the communities specific focus. Downvote trolls can be a problem for small communities trying to build up as they can successfully bury threads. I managed to discover the serial downvoters on my old lemm.ee communiy and when I banned them (about 5 of them?) it had a huge impact. They didn’t all downvote /everything/ but they downvoted a lot of things, and they had no contribution to their names. Some of the accounts in question literally had no posting history. These accounts just existed to downvote.

Now, I wouldn’t just ban random accounts for occasional downvotes - but if I kept seeing the same names on threads (and they never actually engaged with the community) with no discernable pattern of downvoting - I might.

Per the UK definitions, the concept of "NSFW" is deranged. I made a post on what Reddit is supposedly going to do here.

It's more ugly that they are also implicitly saying that you, as a Korean, should just become the plaything of Kim Jong Un. That really you should actually just become a puppet of them.

Said safe and sound somewhere from a bedroom in the USA.