Actual Discussion

I've thought about this, and I've put together my niche community moderation rules into a single post. https://hackertalks.com/post/13655318

TLDR: Banning sucks, but its the only tool I have available at the time to grow the niche communities.

100%. I despise most of the moderators and admins on Lemmy because they use their power to ostracize and delegitamize the voice of others whilst acting as if they are the "good guys" and not as bad as mod forces of conventional social media.

Is there a way to build a "safe space" without building an echo chamber online? Is that even a valuable thing to build?

It's impossible to build a safe space even with echo chambers. Many "safe spaces" such as blahaj.zone are extremely hostile to outsiders, which causes the entire term to fall in vain. The paradox of intolerance proves that aiming for tolerance in an online platform is futile and simply causes asymmetric information to become the norm, promoting bullying of people with dissenting opinions. Literal fascism.

Are niche Communities correct for banning anyone who downvotes?

A community who bans people for downvoting is probably a shithole regardless.

Most importantly, what would it take to change this?

Nothing. The Fediverse is completely unable to solve this because humans are flawed. Every single instance administrator is biased, and being able to run your own instance and ban whoever you want is a recipe for disaster.

Just speak your mind and if people don't like what you say then create your own instance. Nobody should be pressured into a hivemind.

Are niche Communities correct for banning anyone who downvotes?

I'll just speak to this point generally.

Depends on the communities specific focus. Downvote trolls can be a problem for small communities trying to build up as they can successfully bury threads. I managed to discover the serial downvoters on my old lemm.ee communiy and when I banned them (about 5 of them?) it had a huge impact. They didn’t all downvote /everything/ but they downvoted a lot of things, and they had no contribution to their names. Some of the accounts in question literally had no posting history. These accounts just existed to downvote.

Now, I wouldn’t just ban random accounts for occasional downvotes - but if I kept seeing the same names on threads (and they never actually engaged with the community) with no discernable pattern of downvoting - I might.

(WEEKLY) Lemmy's Aggressive Banning Issue

I Comment - https://lemmy.world/modlog?commentId=18282336

Removed by mod

MFW

Mods should always take a light approach to modding and not think they're the true defenders of (their perceived) true faith. That's the problem with stack overflow, lemmy (that I'm now stepping away from in part for this reason and also the amount of insane people running the zoo), reddit. Oh, this is actual discussion that's provocative. Maybe i should stop.

some people and mods on Lemmy have nanometer thin skin. it's kind of expected with the free for all nature of who can make a community and moderate it.

their communities will either die by natural selection because they've banned everyone who can participate. or they will become deep echo chambers. both of these are allowed and expected in the fediverse.

if you don't like their community and how they run things, make your own alternative community and run it the way you like. that is within your control. it is not within your control to change the behavior of every random human on the internet that does something in a way you don't like.

Idk I check the modlogs off phtn i think ocasionally, I feel like if it was that easy to get banned here my other accounts and this one would be banned from somewhere

I got banned from worldnews@hexbear for quoting Douglas Adams and the mods wouldn't accept my explanation, even after I showed them the quote. "It's racist," they said. Then, probably because the same mod runs both comms, I got banned from badposting@hexbear.

I don't really care so much, but I remember it from time to time when I upvote something and it tells me "you're banned."

"online safe space" is an oxymoron,

In the previous thread I linked above, I wrote a mini-guide for my opinion on how to handle downvotes:

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

I think that communities don't have to be for debate. Trying to force that seems fairly hostile to me.

Figuring out which slights are intentional or not is exhausting, unrewarding work and it's absolutely easier to assume all of them are hostile. I'm ok with that. There is little value to a user you have to scrutinize and maybe, just maybe, they're only ignorant and in need of education that you're going to have to provide and maybe, just maybe, they'll accept the lesson. Compared to a user that is clearly on board with a given community and how it's run, it becomes a pretty easy choice.

I've been banned from a bunch of keto communities for downvotes. I'm definitely not there intended audience and was only seeing things via my everything view. They banned me, I blocked those communities. That's fine. The only thing that even slightly bothers me is that it might skew their place on such an everything view and seems vote manipulation adjacent.

Mods can see who up/down votes? Why?

The upvote/downvote system was always meant to be in relation to one agreeing/ disagreeing or liking/disliking with what one is interacting with, and I do believe that it is the inescapable function of it, regardless of how much thought one puts into it or not. One would have to find a bizarre thought process that could result in one avoiding that inevitability. Like someone who chooses to upvote what they disagree with or downvote what they agree with. Doesn't sound conceivable. Maybe in an algorithm driven platform one could use this as a thought experiment to find the opposite of oneself or one's own opposition in suggested content, but here without an algorithm to drive it, not even that is conceivable.

In regards to people piling on and using downvotes in a form of a brigade attack, similar to review bombing pieces of media... While I dislike this profoundly and find it enormously toxic, it is still within the realm of public expression. If one means to silence it, one means to suppress the freedom for others to express themselves as both individuals and as a group. As much as I find it despicable or toxic in a lot of contexts, I can't bring myself to justify the act of banning this form of expression in showing discontent. As I'm sure we've all found moments in which we agreed with a form of public outrage expression such as this one. But we're still all being baited into pack mentality which is an essential feature to maximise engagement in algorithmic platforms. And it is why it is a key requirement for me now that if I'm to join any platform that this feature needs to be non-existent. No algorithm driven platforms for me, thanks. If the user is not driving the experience, I find it repulsive, and so should anyone else.

As to banning in general... The user as an individual can block whomever they so desire, including entire instances. That is the control that anyone should be allowed to have as an individual. But not banning. Moderating or not, I find banning a suppression tool that can be used to suppress legitimate criticism, and it does happen all the time. Everywhere. So, I'm opposed to banning. Even in extreme cases of crude language and abhorrent and toxic behaviour. As I find that banning is sweeping the problem under the rug and not allowing it to be seen, identified, analysed and to further uncover the root causes of that said problem. Be that of an individual or any type of mob mentality. Back when I left reddit, I didn't leave because there were too many shitty users, I left because they were being rewarded with attention without examination. And the algorithm there was what did that and still does. There and everywhere else.

I'm 40. Even recently someone here reminded me of the concept of "Eternal September". I hadn't heard it in a long time. But I've seen it happen many times. The absence of an algorithm alone is enough to build a fence to stave off some of the largest problems of modern online spaces.

For anyone who doesn't know, not even the incel community was a toxic one when it started. In the late 90's it was just people sharing their insecurities in those forums. And it was composed of both male and female users seeking to find connection through the act of sharing their insecurities in an attempt to find a way out of loneliness. Cut to now and what the hell happened? I was too young back then to parse through the nuances and complexities of what was going on those forums. But one thing that I always pondered was if whatever happened there was the prelude to Gamergate. Because I think Gamergate was what "trained" algorithms to reinforce toxicity because it tracked the maximising of engagement that occurred, and then reinforced it because maximising engagement was what it was supposed to do. And just like people swept under the rug the incel community gone terribly wrong by dismissing it as some trivial internet phenomena, people did the same with Gamergate as they dismissed it as some trivial dumb gamer thing. And now look at where we are. But the fact is that this was and has been growing for a long time, people just didn't bother to assess it, and banning this to the outer margins was one of the reasons it grew. And then the algorithms came and rewarded and emboldened it all.

If I had to sum it up I would say... Modern civilization isolates people, which generates loneliness, which generates resentment for others and an enormous need for connection, which then finds connection in resemblance in the loneliness and resentment of others online, with the internet not solving the loniless that is seething underneath of it all and even reinforcing it. It's a loop. And it is not secular to men or young men, it's everyone without a social life and real connections that gets caught in this loop. And the algorithimc influence only accelerates it.

This all to say that banning people is another one of the contributors that leads people down darker and darker paths to find somebody that will listen to them. As uncomfortable as it might be to encounter this phenomena, I want all this in plain sight, and I want everyone of sound mind to try to engage and try to disarm what is causing the people in question to spiral down.

I know it's not pleasant nor easy, but if we avoid it, the result will be even more unpleasant and harder to deal with.

Just take a look at the world now... Loneliness was weaponized by the indecent, because the decent refused to engage. And it is still going on and on.

And the antidote can't be the continuous matching of resentment nor to allow the conditions that set this in motion to remain unacknowledged.