Maybe I’m oversensitive? We all know our votes here are public record, but to me it seems like weird, obsessive, and unhealthy behavior.

It definitely is a red flag for me to the point where I wonder if I shouldn’t just outright block people who go around making it known it’s something the participate in.

  • Zarobi@aussie.zone
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    5 days ago

    There are some valid use cases. If I’m having a discussion with someone, and they’re downvoting all my comments, it’s pretty obvious that they’re not really replying in good faith. At that point, they’re usually here to “win” or troll rather than have a meaningful interaction. It gives insight into their intent and attitude.

    But just as often, it turns out to be a random bystander doing it, so it’s important to check rather than assume.

  • Proprietary_Blend@lemmy.world
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    15 days ago

    You should immediately block everyone who disagrees with you. Then all of your BS will be eternally enabled and you’ll never be wrong about anything.

    • ccunning@lemmy.worldOP
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      15 days ago

      Are you saying I should embrace the thing I fear to take away its power?

      Or just just block folks who vocally disagree?

      • bluGill@fedia.io
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        14 days ago

        You should take an active effort to read the intelligent comments of people who disagree with you. I don’t know how you hand downvotes and blocking and so I can’t tell if this is a comment that is directly at you to change your ways or if you already are doing this and you are only downvoting/blocking obvious garbage. Too many people, when they see a point of view they disagree with, assume immediately that the other person is stupid and that common is garbage. But that is false. It is, however, a very hard bias to overcome in yourself. Something I struggle with, too.

    • schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works
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      15 days ago

      Legitimately the reason I hesitated to block people I was reporting on reddit.

      Lemmy’s public downvoting could be easily gamed.

        • schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works
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          14 days ago

          I envy your lack of imagination.

          Let’s say 0.5% of users care enough about unreported bots to downvote or report them. If all information is public, you can quickly hide your bot comment or posts from that 0.5% and dodge being detected by the community.

          • Dave@lemmy.nz
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            14 days ago

            How do you hide from those 0.5%? Blocking someone stops you seeing them, it doesn’t stop them seeing you?

              • Dave@lemmy.nz
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                14 days ago

                Yes, to the complaint of many but that’s how it currently works.

                • schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works
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                  14 days ago

                  There’s no good solution.

                  Now I can follow around people who blocked me and subtly accuse them of all sorts of awul things and they won’t see it.

          • jaygray91@piefed.zip
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            14 days ago

            Ok who’s 002? As you can see from my instance, you probably can guess I know who rimu is.

            • Maeve@kbin.earth
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              14 days ago

              That extremely personality disordered person with one or several accounts on multiple instances that is mostly a repost bot, claiming none of it is scripted, which is an obvious untruth.

  • SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world
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    15 days ago

    I used to ban people who repeatedly downvoted content on my conservative community but the last couple months I’ve stopped doing that and it hasn’t changed the vibe of the community at all.

    • Maeve@kbin.earth
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      14 days ago

      Ngl, I’m curious who the two consistent downvoters of .ml posts are, even if of they’re just slightly progressive or relatively conservative or actual socialist comments.

      • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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        14 days ago

        Well, that would be a job for a script checking for such occasions, and react to summaries. Not a reason to poke a personal nose into this.

        • Maeve@kbin.earth
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          14 days ago

          If I scripted, that would be reasonable. As it is, I notice and don’t bother.

  • sad_detective_man@sopuli.xyz
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    15 days ago

    Yeah. I did it though. Wish I hadn’t but shitty pattern seeking brain was like “but what if something interesting happens? What if you have an arch enemy”

    No such luck, but it turns out there’s a few accounts who just downvote everything indiscriminately and that’s a little funny

    • ccunning@lemmy.worldOP
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      15 days ago

      The doing it doesn’t bother me so much as the “Hey so I was browsing through my downvotes and noticed you downvoted me. Justify your actions to me!” PMs.

      Like - I don’t even know who you are or what you’re talking about. Thanks for the research project so I can piece together all these disparate pieces of information so I can figure out wtf you’re even talking about.

    • I_Fart_Glitter@lemmy.world
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      14 days ago

      I was curious who the single down vote on every cat post was so I checked. It was a bunch of different people. I’m still confused.

      • [deleted]@piefed.world
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        14 days ago

        When enough people see something someone is likely to either dislike it or fat finger the down vote button accidentally. Nothing to overthink.

      • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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        14 days ago

        I always think the single random downvote on an uncontroversial comment or post is odd, so sometimes I check into those. A few times it’s been from some account that has like 3 comments from 18 months ago and no activity since. Still scratching my head over those ones.

      • Secret_Music@piefed.blahaj.zone
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        14 days ago

        People downvote for absolutely stupid reasons. It’s original intention was for handling trolls and off topic content but most of these people just use it as a ‘dislike’ button. These days more than ever, I feel like it’s something that should just be done away with because it gets proven over and over again that it only really ever gets used in bad faith anyway, and therefore adds nothing of value to the platform.

        That’s why I’m quite happy on an instance with downvotes simply disabled. Personally, between Reddit and Lemmy I’ve probably purposely downvoted about five things, when a person doesn’t know when to end an ‘argument’ and just becomes a troll.

        Last time I was more active here, I did end up getting into the habit of checking votes and honestly, it just makes me want to block people, even if they haven’t been downvoting me. If you’re the kind of person that goes around downvoting everything all day for stupid fucking reasons, you’re probably an unlikeable, insufferable turd in ‘real’ life too.

        • Secret_Music@piefed.blahaj.zone
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          14 days ago

          After spending the last year or so exploring mainstream social media, one of the biggest differences between Facebook and Instagram, is that Facebook has multiple reacts. And certain people, notably men, love to use the laugh react to bully people. You’ll find laugh reacts on everything from a trans person posting a selfie, to feminist pages posting about rape and abuse stats. On Instagram, the bigots are still there in the comment sections but they’re a lot easier to ignore because there’s a lot less noise in that regard, on how they’re allowed to react to things.

          After this experience, I 100% believe that the people who rely on the downvote button so much on platforms like this and Reddit, are actually exactly the same kind of fucking people that laugh react news stories about rape. Stupid, mean, cruel, stupid people who can’t spar with their stupid ideas, so all they have is a panic button to make them feel better.

  • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    15 days ago

    The only time I check is to try and catch if I’m being targeted by someone mass down voting me or using alts to do so. Only when I’m seeing weird stuff like every one of my comments for a while getting at least one downvote, or seeing my comments deep in a one on one conversation on an otherwise dead thread getting multiple downvotes (no one’s going to even see those except me and who I’m talking to).

    Unfortunately, this has been a “you’re only paranoid if they aren’t out to get you” situation. Most give up after a day or two and I just block and move on, but it was a bit common for a few months.


    I caught one of the “respected” members of my instance pulling that shit, a person who moderates multiple comms, downvoting me using their alts over multiple instances.

    They accused me of doxxing them (they were actually around that time). Now I have a bunch of bans in my modlog saying that I used a slur, when I was quoting the name of an ancient meme and I edited the word out long before they did the bans.

    • Aqivex@fedinsfw.app
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      14 days ago

      (no one’s going to even see those except me and who I’m talking to).

      Untrue. Even one on one’s in a public medium, are public. Lurkers have every right to opine on takes as they see fit, reply or platform-granted reaction tools both. Whether they catch the comments fresh or later when you consider it a “dead thread”.

      I personally do it all the time, upvote or downvote.

      There’s only so many hours in a day and Fediverse content isn’t so plentiful that it makes sense to mark discussions that are still near the top of a comms feed as “dead” to me.

      That’s before we even get into how easy it is to accidentally hit the buttons in a lot of Lemmy client apps.

      • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        14 days ago

        I’m well aware. I’m not talking about those situations. I’m talking ~20 comments deep on a thread that has seen no other action for multiple days. And I’m not talking about it just getting one downvote between when I reply from people happening to find it.

        And even then, I just check. I’m not harassing people, I’m not jumping to immediately blocking. I’m just looking to see if it is something weird going on. If there is, I block.

        And I haven’t done any of this since last year. No need.

    • [deleted]@piefed.world
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      14 days ago

      Just letting you know that I down voted this comment so you don’t need to waste the time looking up who did it.

      • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        14 days ago

        What? Ok?

        This isn’t a comment on a sub thread of a sub thread of an otherwise long dead thread jumping from no downvotes to -3 in like a single day (between the time I made my comment and the time I’m responding to the reply). I’m not actively watching this stuff and I think you’ve misunderstood what I’m talking about.

        Now if you’re going to check my profile page over the next few days to a week? Then I might notice the downvotes and look, but I honestly haven’t noticed anything like that or checked votes against my comments since the event I mentioned in my last comment with that powermod, which was sometime last year.

        Downvotes on a comment like mine, offering a semi-reasonable explanation for disliked behavior, are entirely expected. Hell, downvotes an any comment expressing an opinion.

  • infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net
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    14 days ago

    “I went through your post history and so now I feel confident stereotyping you” is a borderline temp ban red flag, imo. It definitely indicates that the person is tilted hard enough, for one reason or another, to not take the discussion rationally and maybe need a break. If your community excludes certain harmful opinions then a post history check can be helpful for moderation, but using it to ad hominem someone in a discussion forum where all the important information should be in the discussion is flame war tactics and can lead to stalking.

    Usually doesn’t happen here to the degree it happens on reddit, but literally this week I had someone do it to try and claim that I hate cars because I post in /c/fuckcars@lemmy.world, even though I myself own two cars. Indeed, it was a stupid topic that dependably gets some people irrationally incensed, which primed this guy to try and make it personal.

  • CerebralHawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    14 days ago

    I dunno. It’s how the platform was designed. Lemmy was designed to imitate Reddit but with some changes. Looking back at a Redditor’s post history was always controversial. Vote history just adds a new layer to that.

    I got banned from a bunch of AI comms I’ve never visited; I can only guess because I’m a member of “Fuck AI”. Truth is, I’m curiously cautious, or cautiously curious, I’m not sure. I’m not too big on AI, but neither am I vehemently against it (besides its affect on the gaming industry). I think the ban was just a knee-jerk reaction and probably a bit uncalled for, but again, the platform has the feature for a reason.

    I always thought I had the sanest take on Reddit when it came to viewing post history. If someone was vitriolic, I’d check their history to see if this is how they are all the time or if they’re having a bad day. If the former, I might downvote/block… if the latter, I might give it a few days and reply, hoping they’d be in a better mood then.

    I’ve never looked at another user’s vote history. It’s not really any of my business; I don’t see a real benefit for me to do so.

  • Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    Sometimes I’ll check post and comment history if something seems a little off. For example, does this account show patterns you might see in a troll or bot?

    Looking at votes though? That never even occurred to me, and even know I don’t see what the point would be.

  • BassTurd@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    I’ll look at some users who post a ridiculous take on something. I mostly look to see if they are just a shitty troll or if it was a one off and decide if I want to block them. I don’t look through there posts for context, just the raw vote numbers. If someone is majority negative on their posts, then they don’t need to show up in my feed.

    There are a handful of other users on here who I see frequently that I don’t agree with on a lot of things, and the community agrees with me based on votes, but those users also make good comments that are beneficial to some conversations and sometimes I learn something new. I’ll put up with the bad for the good.

      • BassTurd@lemmy.world
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        14 days ago

        It really comes down to whether or not I think someone is arguing in bad faith, but there’s a fine line between bad faith and complete idiocy. Like, if someone is a hardcore trump supporter, they could argue in good faith, but we are so far apart that there really is no discussion to be had. I can’t fathom any situation where anyone could support him without being a pedophile and/or a billionaire business owner. Then there are trolls that will just use strawman arguments to move the goalposts on any topic just to not be wrong, and that shit just isn’t worth ingesting, ever.