Is it a PTB move (!yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com) to ban a user if their only activity in a community is downvoting posts?
The behaviour baffles me a bit. If they dislike the majority of the posts in a community, why are they subscribed? Or if they are browsing by /all, why have they not blocked the community? Are they under the mistaken impression that Lemmy has an algorithm which uses downvotes as an indicator for “show me less of this”?
Has anyone else encountered a “serial downvoter” in any of their communities?
Ban them.
Lemmy is so young (and feeble) that users like those are an actual threat to your community and the larger network by driving away those who actually contribute to the community. In 2019, TrueBirch from Reddit analysed the data and concluded that only 1.9% of users actually comment or post while 98.1% just lurks. When your community is has a thousand or so users, it’s entirely reasonable to protect those ~20 users who are creating content for the rest. In fact, the majority of the rest likely don’t upvote things either.
I’ve heard this described as “the 1% Rule”, which more or less goes like: In online communities, 1% of the users generate 90% of the content, 9% of the users create 10% of the content by reacting to, modifying or generally interacting with that 1%, and the other 90% of people are lurkers. This fits quite well with what I’ve seen on online communities myself for decades. So, if you alienate that 1%, your community will eventually either disappear or become a hollow reflection of what it used to be.
Absolutely, and it’s already pretty hard to bootstrap a community organically† to so you should not hesitate to do what’s necessary to keep it healthy as small communities cannot moderate themselves easily.
† From How Reddit Got Huge: Tons of Fake Accounts:
Well, according to Reddit cofounder Steve Huffman, in the early days the Reddit crew just faked it ‘til they made it. In the above video for Udacity, an online source for education and lectures, Huffman describes how the first Redditors populated the site’s content with tons of fake accounts.
Came in with the opposite view, but this convinced me and changed my mind.
Glad to hear! As I said, Lemmy is still so young that it makes perfect sense. Even much more mature and much larger communities take similar measures:
- Hacker News users cannot downvote anything until their karma is > 500 and even then only comments (not submissions) [source].
- Some large Reddit communities such as r/politics hide downvote buttons altogether or for non-subscribed users. They even ran a study back in 2018: Does Hiding Downvotes Improve Behavior in r/politics?
Community cultures vary widely, but in the case of r/politics, hiding downvotes does not appear to have had any of the substantial benefits or disastrous outcomes that people expected.
I’m not saying that downvotes are bad, but that people abusing downvote mechanism are bad and that it’s okay to ban such users while bootstrapping a community.
My initial reaction when I read your posts was 100% support for banning them. They’d be better off blocking the community so it never shows up in their feed. But in the hours since, a counter argument occurred to me that I’d like to present.
Lemmy is, as many have said, still a relatively young and small platform. The range of content on it is limited not just by what subjects have communities, but what the individuals posting in those communities happen to be interested enough in to share.
A user might not want to block a community because they do like the subject of that community and want to read about it. But maybe only one user is actively posting content, and the subset of interest in the subject for user A just doesn’t match the subset of user B. Naturally, they end up downvoting all the content at present. Where in a hypothetical that there were hundreds of active users posting in that community, the user would only downvoted a small fraction.
As a hypothetical, imagine I create a !classicalmusic community. I’m a big fan of classical music, especially Beethoven and the Romantics. I post a heap of discussion about Romantic theory, recordings of Beethoven Symphonies, Rachmaninoff Sonatas, etc. Because it’s a small community, I’m the only one posting.
Then you come along, a huge Bach fan. You don’t mind some Classical era stuff like Mozart and Haydn, but you can’t stand the Romantic era. You downvote everything I post.
In my opinion, unless you want to get even more into the weeds and enforce the idea of “downvotes are only for off-topic and spam content, not for dislike” (which, I agree in theory is how the best users treat it, but let’s be honest…it doesn’t happen in practice), I don’t think I should ban you.
Maybe I could send off a DM asking you to explain your downvotes, and I would ban you if you came back and said “I don’t want to see classical music in my feed” (along with a recommendation that you use the block feature). And I’d try to encourage you to participate more in submitting the stuff you do want to see. But an attempt to figure things out some other way would be better than a ban, in that case.
Then you come along, a huge Bach fan. You don’t mind some Classical era stuff like Mozart and Haydn, but you can’t stand the Romantic era. You downvote everything I post.
Something about this would seem kind of selfish to me. Just because I don’t like the Romantic era doesn’t mean I should try to bend the entire !classicalmusic community to my will. My efforts would be better spent posting to or creating !baroquemusic, !romantic_era, etc.
As it happens, I happen to like both the baroque and romantic eras :)
I’ll leave this here for anyone else who might be interested: !classical@lemmy.studio
Right, but this comes down to that same discussion I alluded to but largely wanted to avoid (due to irrelevance) about whether the downvote is for disliking content, or whether it should only ever be for off-topic and spam. You’re just never going to get a situation where people stop using it for content they dislike.
I feel this could go several ways.
Troll who just wants to make people feel bad. Ban them.
Person who legitimately thinks content is low-quality, but likes the topic in general (perhaps no other Lemmy community exists for it?) and wants to see better posts. Leave it alone.
Drive-by voter checking in from Local or All (sorting by New makes even small communities visible, so “we’re not big” isn’t immune), maybe they legit think it’s low effort, or hostile and toxic. Or they just see Thing They Don’t Like and downvote instead of using the system properly—not quite the same as a troll purposely, maliciously ruining things but in my opinion not a great practice at all, but also not quite a bannable offense, unless they actively subscribe to a community full of things they do not like just to shit on it. And I am guessing right now intent is pretty hard to prove.
Because I can think of reasonable reasons to do this I would err on the side of not punishing a potential innocent. I’d wait at least until you see several extremely high-quality posts that are also inoffensive get downvoted. But I also get that downvoting everything in a community can be destructive. A big community can just shake it off, the upvotes will eventually outweigh the few downvotes. A small one will look like it has crap content if there is ~3 up/3 down to every post.
Also, check patterns outside your community too. Explicit stated intent to ruin community in a comment? Goodbye. Upvotes things outside the community? More chance to be a normal user who’s probably got an innocent reason to downvote.
You need to know why.
I went through days on Reddit where I would not find something posted that I wanted to upvote and found posts that, while maybe good for another community, were not fitting my definition of the intended topic. As a non-mod, you can’t directly shape the content, but you can vote.
Like you said, they also might not understand that downvoting things from a particular community will not make it show up less.
Just ask them. If they’re a jerk, you can still ban them. If they are ignorant but cool, you can help them be a better netizen.
deleted by creator
I have an opinion about practically everything
Where is the /s?
they should perhaps create more content that I like?
Your account is less than 15 days old. You have 57 comments and one single post about politics. Not exactly the type of discussion that is interesting or valuable to the network.
Perhaps you should lead by example and post more of the stuff that you like? It’s very easy to criticize, not so easy to actually show up and do the stuff that is needed.
PTB. This thread is insane to me. If one person is downvoting posts, so fucking what? Just because they only downvote means their opinion is less valid? Maybe the content just sucks. If this is banworthy, then I might just be done with Lemmy already bc this is some petty bullshit.
If someone comes across an active well moderated community filled with on-topic content of an objectively high quality where everyone seems to be having fun, and that someone downvotes everything in that community every day, how is that beneficial? Why don’t they post content they like? If they hate everything, why don’t they block the community? Why are they spending time and effort to downvote so much stuff every day when it would be easier, and seemingly better for their mental health, to either block and move on, or contribute the flavor of content they want to see?
No one is getting banned for downvoting content here and there, but if they’re putting effort in ensuring everything in a community is downvoted, they’d just be spreading illwill for no good reason :(
A good mod will help their community grow and flourish and have a good vibe. A mass downvoter who contributes nothing else is harmful to those things, and it makes sense a mod would want to defend their community against that.
Edit: kind’ve ironic that you simply downvoted both me and Blaze 😅
I’ve encountered a few of those users, and personally I ban them.
My criteria:
- They must be downvoting a majority of posts, where it’s clear there is no real discrimination on quality (as then some posted close together would be spared)
- I notice it happening across multiple communities/instances
- I see the same name again and again, day after day
- I never see that user upvote anything anywhere
I know there was one user who was mass downvoting to, according to them, mark posts as read.
I thought that was fairly ridulous, as why not just mass upvote instead to achieve the same effect? Wasn’t sure I fully bought that, as they were dismissive when someone asked them to stop.
Lemmy is still small, and it seems unwise to allow mass downvoting to potentially discourage or limit the reach of people putting in the effort to help this place grow.
I’ve never had a downvoter message me to ask why they were banned or dispute it, so I figure they didn’t even notice that they no longer saw the stuff that caused them to downvote in the first place.
I doubt anyone would ever object to banning for the behaviour you described here. But unless I’m way off base, I don’t think that’s what OP is talking about.
What you’re talking about is basically inauthentic behaviour. Maybe it’s a bot, maybe it’s a real person deliberately interfering with a community using sock puppet accounts. What I think OP is talking about is a real user using the platform in an essentially honest way, but which happens to involve downvoting all the posts from one community. There could be a few reasons behind that, such as the example OP described of a user who actually has no interest in ever seeing the community, but doesn’t know how or doesn’t think to block the community. On all other communities, their behaviour appears totally normal.
Ah. I don’t think I’ve encountered that type of user yet. For the users I described in my comment, I give them a full instance ban. But In the case you describe, I think it’d be appropriate for a mod of the targeted community to ban them, but otherwise leave them be.
In the case you describe, I think it’d be appropriate for a mod of the targeted community to ban them
I thought that at first too, but I recently thought of a counterexample, so I’m not so sure. See my top-level comment if you’re interested.
I agree that reaching out to a user like that and having them stop would be the best outcome. Though In the context of the thread, I don’t think a mod who didn’t reach out before banning would be a PTB (not that you’re suggesting that, just elaborating my thoughts).
one user who was mass downvoting to, according to them, mark posts as read
Wow, I’ve not heard that one before. It does seem fairly ridiculous.
My one school of thought is that popular posts at the top of the frontpage deserve to be downvoted in order to refresh the content.
Why not just sort by Hot, New, or Scaled instead? The popular posts in Active sort will naturally go away as discussion in them dies down (comments boost posts too).
I don’t actually do it and sort by top hour or six hour or hot. But it could be a reason to downvote if the same post is up for days and downvoting hides posts.
It’s possible to hide posts without downvoting as well.
Immediate ban seems overkill. If I were a mod, I would ask the user privately to explain why they are doing this, and decide based on the response. This also puts the user on notice that their actions are being noticed and watched, which itself might cause a change.
Is it possible they’re a bot?
Ask your community members, maybe?
I lean towards “go for it! block away” but I come from a different internet culture than reddit so could never mod anywhere similar. You might get better advice from someone who’s spent more time in these spaces.
To me, It seems like chronic downvotes from nonmembers could mess up your comm’s discovery. And is mildly annoying. Not terrible, but I don’t think they need to be evil to get a community block. If you do it too much, your community might stagnate and people might start a new one. Oh well! Good luck to the new guys, imo. You might end up on PTB and get harassed. Always a risk as a mod, unfortunately.
Put “frequent exclusive downvotes from non-members gets a block to increase likelihood of community discovery by people interested in this content” on your profile. I mean, if you talk with your community members and they agree it’s an issue.
If it’s everything (in a community/profile) maybe, particularly if they don’t have any contributions elsewhere. Or if it’s actually something heartfelt/personal I can see being more touchy about it, less so with bot-like aggregation or reposting old content etc.
Because otherwise, it’s not going to be obvious where the line is when you add in time and % of content. If you’re using a bot/script to detect voting, you’re likely going to ban users just for casual browsing (even if they could explain their votes). Especially as an instance ban purges a user’s account (to users of that instance) as if they’re on the same level as an SEO spammer. Does a voting disagreement mean the rest of their account is invalid?
I don’t know if it’s fedi incompatibility or just 0-transparency moderation, but dubvee might be doing this but it’s unclear as they seem to be just handing out silent bans (no ban reason stated).
PTB?
“Power tripping bastard” = a mod abusing their power, usually by banning people they dont like personally instead of bans because of actuall rules violations
Thanks
“Power-Tripping Bastard”
If their only contribution is downvotes, then it’s not really a PTB IMO and should be done.
I have strong opinions here. I view moderating a small community as trying to grow a garden and set the tone such that other people feel comfortable contributing to that garden.
The core problem with negative only participation is it makes the community hostile to new contributors. Most people on lemmy are lurkers, and if they feel that their post will be met with overwhelming negativity they simply wont post.
Downvoting is a form of participation, its a negative signal by design.
If someone hates a community so much they feel they need to downvote it every time they see it, but they don’t want to block the community, its totally reasonable for a moderator to help them block the community so it doesn’t ruin their lemmy experience (i.e. ban them from the community so they don’t see it anymore)
Have you tried messaging them?
