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.
I disagree. Mods can make these decisions, the modlogs are public and accountable (I’m for accountability in both ways) and the community - and instance admins can intervene if they think the moderators themselves are responding in bad faith. Private voting across the fediverse, where plenty of users have multiple accounts spread out across the fediverse on different instances would invite a ton of mass-downvoting as it could be done with relative ease.
And it’s my legitimate use as a moderator to determine that someone who does that is not part of any community I am building, and is actively vandalous towards it.
If it is proper coordinated or autmated mass-downvoting campaign that should be a job for the admins.
Yes, that’s how it currently works. I’m arguing it shouldn’t work like this for votes.
It would just be one person. But it wouldn’t even necessarily be noticed to be reported to the admins.
Oh well. It’s been like this for years now and I think broadly speaking, it has majority approval because of how it cultivates a high-trust culture.