this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2025
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Actual Discussion
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Are you tired of going into controversial threads and having people not discuss things, circlejerking, or using emotional responses in place of logic? Us too.
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For more casual conversation instead of competitive ranked conversation, try: !casualconversation@piefed.social
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Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. We try to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are highly encouraged as no-discussion downvotes don't help anyone learn anything valuable. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!
We’re back! Instead of putting a neutral topic in the introduction, I'm placing a bit of opinion on an issue to see if it helps spur discussion. We are also actively seeking moderators and people who enjoy discussion (and understand that being wrong is an important part of being a better person)! Send me a message if you’d like to help out.
This week, I'd like to discuss something that's been a bit of an issue for me personally.
Lemmy (and Reddit before it) appears to have a problem with overly-aggressive bannings for perceived slights. In the topic linked above there were people permanently banning users from multiple communities (any they moderate - dozens in some cases) for single downvotes, 4 downvotes across a ten-month period, and bannings because a moderator thought they maybe sorta kinda read that a user may have had a negative thought about their pet issue.
I've personally been banned from Communities (and sent some pretty vile PMs) for posting in our weekly threads here playing devil's advocate where I state hard questions that I do not necessarily feel are correct. They think they've discovered some secret agenda by finding posts I've made here and use them as "receipts" in order to dismiss anything they think they're reading that may be contrary to their opinion. Any context provided for the post falls on deaf ears.
I'm someone who operates on the idea of "If you can not defend an opinion from scrutiny, you should probably not hold that opinion."
To quote myself:
It’s pretty tragic that people can't handle opposing opinions. I think the activist nature of Lemmy is kind of a self-destructive spiral and people need to learn how to live with each other again. But I guess that’s the issue with modern social media as a whole… Nobody has any idea how to convince anyone else, only to yell at them louder.
Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):
- Are niche Communities correct for banning anyone who downvotes?
- Do downvotes represent a "disagree" button for you (this Community notwithstanding)?
- Most importantly, what would it take to change this?
- Does it help build the Community? What about the platform as a whole?
- Is there a way to build a "safe space" without building an echo chamber online? Is that even a valuable thing to build?
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In the previous thread I linked above, I wrote a mini-guide for my opinion on how to handle 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: May or may not comment in YOUR Community, especially if it's image-based, but you can check their profile. The Community they are in may not even register to them as they will often only browse single posts, not a Community. 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. 4 downvotes from disparate users are not a brigade, so don't jump the gun. If they are verified to be Brigading, ban these people. They are dickheads 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. Dangerous in that they 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.
If lemmy allowed for private/subscriber only communities I would agree with you. But when EVERYONE can see EVERYTHING in ALL, then we have a different dynamic. Suppose there is a niche community with 10 people who want to talk about something, but there are 1,000 people who don't like that niche community. These 1,000 normal users will downvote something they don't like without targeting it specifically - So the 10 people in the very niche community always get lots of downvotes, chilling their participation on a niche topic.
Incidental negativity can overwhelm niche discussion forums, especially with the ALL mechanic. The ideal solution would be for subscriber only forums, or allowing moderators to select specific posts for ALL, but in the current lemmy meta those niche communities need a way to create a welcoming space for their minority of members.
I do like the idea for sub-only Communities. I wonder if it's on the dev list?
its on the 1.0 roadmap, "private communities" i think is the title
Absolutely this happens to me. Especially if the fur babies are trampling me/seeking pets/using me as a bed.
Vote choice should never, ever be a reason for banning, unless it's a brigade. Most of the time, there are too many variables, nuance, or other things to consider that we can't see. Without commentary, who can truly understand the full meaning behind a vote?