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.
Many mods are completely powerless in their lives. Its why the become mods. To feel like they have some control over their lives. They don’t. Just like the rest of us. The difference being they are mods and can push their pathetically limited power around. Just like some asshole on the highway who slows down when you can’t pass and goes to warp when you can.
You get similar “petty dictator” behaviors in other areas such as bouncers and police officers.
Some people are little more than bitches of their own subconscious inferiority complexes.
The other kind of will also calously fuck other up, Sociopaths (who seem to be present day society’s natural winners), unlike these types don’t do it because they feel the need to somehow prove their superiority over others, it’s just because others stand in the way of their personal upside maximization and they simply don’t care if other are hurt as long as they themselves gain from it, so they’re actually very different from these petty dictator types.