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...
I don't understand the thought process here. Like many, I don't browse Communities individually, I browse /All and sort by New.
So I am required to see something I like and upvote or else I am not allowed to an express an opinion in the community (or any tangentially linked community)?
If I see something I don't like (which is what the voting system is for), I should go to the Community it's posted in and make sure to upvote things before I downvote? That's the expected order of operations?
If not... what if, while browsing /All /New nothing randomly appears that the viewer likes enough to upvote? Is that then somehow the fault of the viewer and they should then be banned?
Am I interpreting your rulings correctly? 4 downvotes in the span of 10 months (judging by the times on those posts you listed) is a bannable offence? Seems rather heavy-handed to me.
If the community is about something you dislike (which seems to be the case here), why would you not just block them from your feed instead of downvoting?
Maybe I'm indifferent to the majority of the content they spew but there is one really shitty post that I down vote that isn't worth blocking the feed over.
Keep in mind that the pattern that resulted in the OP being banned from over a dozen communities was down voting a single post. That would be triggered if the one post they down voted was literal spam or racist or sexist or any other terrible subject.
Or someone accidentally clicks on the down vote button with their fat thumb unintentionally. The mod assumes malicious intent and overreacts.
I wonder if the "overreaction" was caused by the constant harassment from anti genAI trolls? You helped create this situation, the mods are simply trying to deal with it. Sometimes that's unfortunately going to result in erroneous bans, which can usually be resolved by DMing the mod.
I have yet to see an example of any individual post getting more than a handful of downvotes, which is completely expected to happen when hundreds or thousands of users have the opportunity to come across the content. That isn't harassment, and neither is people vocalizing their dislike of AI in comments.
If people are being harassed, then there should be moderation records, right? Are there dozens of people harassing people who like AI, or is the 'constant harassment' just disagreement that has been blown out of proportion by people who run communities that don't get the attention they think they deserve?
My one vote per post or comment is jot part of any problem. That is how voting works. I don't coordinate with anyone else, it is just me using a feature that exists the way I want to.
I accept you are capable of being an asshole all by yourself, requiring no coordination.
Oh, we get to throw insults around? Didn't think that was the case but have fun I guess.
Just pointing out that every time this has come up in YPTB it is an overreacting mod hiding behind the 'anti AI harassment or brigading' while the explanation is a few people happened to downvote a few things. I don't doubt there have been a few people doing that, but absolutely not enough to justify Draconic Leo's moderation log filled to the brim with accusations of bote manipulation. Pointing things out isn''t sealioning, nor is having a conversation in the comments of the same post.
Here you go though, what comment(s) in my moderation or posting history are harassment?
The answer is none, the accusation in the bans is a lie.
Yeah bro, it's all a conspiracy against you.
No, it is just shitty moderation practices that have a negative outcome. Nobody is coming for me, I just happened to get caught in the same net.
Learn to read.
On the other hand, if you've found a bunch of stuff worth downvoting and not a single thing worth upvoting, that's probably a sign.
Nah, it turns out OP has downvoted multiple posts in the comm over time. Somebody posted records elsewhere in this thread
Four downvotes across months means absolutely nothing. Nada. It is a statical blip.
Nah, feel free to downvote. But to go into that same community and just downvote every single post is not cool. Not only that, some people go to that same community every day to keep downvoting every single post. Regardless of content. And some, in my personal case, go to other comms I run and do the same thing, even tho they are totally unrelated posts and unrelated subject manner.
I'm not saying you did that, but it's happening so much, that you probably just got caught up in it. If you really want to get back into those comms, email the mod.
I don't know why people browse like that in the first place. Of course you're going to see a lot of crap. Why not subscribe to communities with content you enjoy?
This isn’t Reddit where there is a firehouse of content all day and at all times.
For doom scrollers such as myself, browsing all is a requirement.
Personally, I use that as a cue that I should put my phone down and do something useful.
I subscribe and am usually filtersd to subscriptions but also switch to All occasionally to help discover new communities.
OPs story keeps changing so much.
"Oh I was unfairly banned"
"Oh I only downvoted 1 post"
"So what I only downvoted 4 posts"
Still nope. Geez, you are really dedicated to thinking the worst thing you can about people, hey?
I didn't say unfairly banned. I was confused as to why I was banned.
I did downvote one post near the time of the ban. I didn't look prior to that. 4 posts downvoted in ten months isn't normally something I'd associate with a ban. People don't generally ban for things that happened ten months ago. Especially since the votes were reasonably more private back then.
It's all one story. The same story. It evolved as I discovered more about what occurred. It's called learning. Make an attempt to do so as well please.
Not commenting on anything else in your comment except to say: Votes have never been private on Lemmy. The have been made more visible, but they were always just an API call away.
Oh, I'm aware, but they weren't as exposed as they are since 19.10 made them easily visible to Mods. It was MUCH harder to get downvote totals prior.
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!
If the community is promoting misinformation or hate then I would hope this is considered the right thing to do.
Maybe. Just I case, I wouldn't interact. I would report it to an Admin most likely.
From what I've seen, most Admins will either not let that stand or sadly lead the charge on the psycho shit.
If it's the first, you're good. It'll be gone soon.
If it's the latter, get the hell outta that instance and block it.
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.
Okay... but that has nothing to do with the matter at hand. By your own admission, this user only voted negatively four times over the course of nine months. That clearly doesn't fit the picture you're trying to paint here. If that constitutes brigaiding, that leaves no room for normal use.
And just so we're clear, I have been downvoting you within this thread, and that is owed entirely to the contents of your responses, as they've been conflicting, nonsensical, and overall harmful to the community.
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.
Just FYI, I'm not downvoting you.
The bad faith actors should be somewhat easy to pick out. They are in my Community anyway. They often have scads of downvotes they throw out in a short time, not a few over the course of months. Dunno if you are, but if you're using automation to ban, you may just want to tune it to be a little more lenient.
"You don't have to like anything but downvoting is harassment."
wow... how fucking braindead can you get? No wonder you support AI... It has more thoughts than you do, and it demonstrably has zero...