This is not a new issue, but we’ve had reports from some communities that they are experiencing a lot of repeated downvotes from the same set of people.
This is how it typically plays out, using AI images as an example:
- A section of the lemmy user base really hates anything AI generated.
- Instead of blocking AI generated image communities, they down vote those posts every time they see them.
- The posts in those communities effectively have to overcome a “handicap” of down votes each time they are posted. This harms community growth and discoverability.
The admin team would like to know how our community would like us to handle this issue, since it isn’t clear to us what is the best approach, and we would like a consensus view.
Some option for consideration:
- Encourage/allow community mods to ban persistent down voters from their community (note that we currently have no specific rule in place for this, so it is currently allowed).
- Pros: prevents future down votes; essentially “unsubscribes” from the community on their behalf
- Cons: could potentially be abused by mods who want to eliminate all down voters and “game” the system
- Have a policy of ignoring the persistent down voters
- Pros: allows people to continue to express their dislike of [insert topic]-type posts
- Cons: means that communities on topics that are not of interest to (or are actively disliked by) the majority of users will continue to be penalized in the lemmy post feeds.
- Leave it up to the discretion of the individual community mods
- Pros: self-determination and community based approach (i.e. only applied when needed)
- Cons: potentially inconsistent approach to down voters across the instance
Feel free to come up with more options, but these are the three main alternatives I could come up with.
We are interested to get your thoughts on the topic so we can come up with a policy for the instance. Please leave your comments below on your preferred option and the reasons for your choice.
Edit: apparently community mods can’t currently see the voting breakdown in Lemmy, only instance admins can, so this adds further complexity to the issue.
A solution I thought of is that we could potentially create a bot that checks if a downvoter is subscribed to the community they are voting in. If they downvote more than 3 posts a day in such as community they get a 3 day ban, second time they get a 7 day ban, third time they get permanent ban.
Also if they downvote more than 70% of a community’s posts they get permabanned either way. Downvote happy subscribers are clearly trying to game the system, so they don’t get two chances to correct the behavior before a permanent one.
Could have the rules be customizable or not, basically it would check those two statuses and impose a ban if correct conditions aren’t met or the user goes overboard with downvoting. Users who would want to use it in their community could simply add the bot via photon or the API.
punishing people for downvoting AI slop
Now that would be quite the turn… Downvoting AI slop is the basic human decency I’d expect from Lemmy.
One person’s “slop” is another person’s favourite content, which is exactly the problem with “activist downvoting”. Those persistent down voters are effectively forcing their own personal feed preferences on everyone who uses Lemmy instead of simply blocking the communities they aren’t interested in. AFAIK it’s a problem with a lot of niche communities, not just with AI related communities.
effectively forcing their own personal feed preferences on everyone who uses Lemmy
But… that’s how voting literally works. Hence one of the smartest ideas I saw once for Lemmy (and for the Fediverse in general) was to substitute upvoting/downvoting for “voting on tags”, such as being able to tag a post as “fake news”, “inspiring” or “AI generated” and have people vote on those instead of on the psot / comment proper. Alas, I don’t know what ever happened to that proposal, and could never find it again to track it down.
But, see, that’s the thing and that’s why there’s an important difference between blocking and downvoting:
If I block something bad, like say fake news or fascism or AI, I block it only for me, it’s only protecting myself; but if I downvote it, I also help protect my peers. If we want to make community, that’s very important. And like any measure, it can be gamed, but so long as it’s the one option we have, we gotta use like that. I expect AI slop to be batch-downvoted; if I didn’t, I’d be back at Reddit.
This is a very paternalistic attitude imo. Your peers don’t need “protecting” from AI content any more than they need “protecting” from pornography, for example. Isn’t it preferable that they get to decide for themselves without you trying to sink those communities in the feed?
If I block something bad, like say fake news or fascism or AI, I block it only for me, it’s only protecting myself; but if I downvote it, I also help protect my peers. If we want to make community, that’s very important. And like any measure, it can be gamed, but so long as it’s the one option we have, we gotta use like that. I expect AI slop to be batch-downvoted; if I didn’t, I’d be back at Reddit.
Keep in mind that this is an AI friendly instance and those communities indeed are clearly marked and have the right to exist, your attempt to suppress them from others including their target audience would be viewed as hostile, and therefore it is fair and reasonable for their moderators and admins to ban you from the communities, and possibly even this site for the interference.
I understand you have feelings about AI as a concept, but try to understand how it looks to people who don’t, including those admins and moderators. Imagine if a person operated a community about Digital Audio and music on Digital formats, and someone who passionately hated Digital music as a concept and thought it was killing Analog downvoted their entire community as a group of Anti-Digital activists. Do you think their behavior would be seen as some kind of righteous activism, especially by the mods of those communities, or do you think it would be seen as an act of hostility to try and suppress a community that is clearly marked, and has the right to exist.
We can argue about the ethics of Corporate AI and AI in disinformation, however it is clear that communities like the stable diffusion art community and AI discussion communities are clearly marked and indeed have the right to exist. If you don’t like them you should block them and if your friends don’t like them either they should. Trying to suppress communities that have the right to exist and are not doing anything illegal or against policy because you dislike them isn’t something heroic, or viewed positively, it is considered an act of hostility against them, no different than the Vinyl guys brigading the Digital music communities in the analogy.
If you believe that these communities though violate your own instance’s policies, it would be suggested that you report them to your instance admins, either via the report system or sending a DM to them. Otherwise you should block them and let other people block them or ignore them as they choose.
Ok, but if that’s your opinion then you should be fine with the same happening to “traditional” art communities. We should be allowed to brigade them in return, preventing them from showing up in feeds until they die off and move elsewhere.
If you don’t like AI, move to an instance that isn’t friendly to it. If you hate something, you don’t belong on an instance where it is accepted.
I would agree with this, except on the merit of moving instances, community blocking exists for the purpose of curating your feed to remove content you dislike.
I know a lot of people do not take the time to get to know the instances of the communities they subscribe to but they probably should, since the values of the communities on an instance are greatly shared with the values of the instance itself. Instances aren’t just random servers either, they’re like larger meta communities with their own culture and value. And generally if you don’t jive well with the instance you probably should steer clear of the communities it homes, as they will mostly share its values. That’s why the instance sidebar is displayed beneath the community sidebar on all remote communities.
Also I would like to take the time to say that their comment blanket comparing AI tools (including/not excluding those developed as an open-source or community effort) with fascism and fake news, feels extremely disingenuous and like a bad faith comparison. I’m not saying they should get in trouble for it but it feels like a very bad faith attack on our community. This kind of reminds me of the time that AI banner generation was announced on !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com and a lot of anti-AI trolls crawled out of the woodwork to complain, or even call for action against the community. I don’t know I just think people need to know how to read the room and know the space a bit better. @db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com @Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com Any thoughts you’d like to add on this last part guys?
I think you pretty much summed it up, matey.
If only we had an option to disable downvotes from non-subscribers!
Another solution would be to set it up via a bot. I could make a bot that you invite to your community and it automatically bans anyone who downvotes more than some % of posts, and allow that to be configurable by the mod. Not quite sure I can get that info from the API, but if not I could try my hand at a plugin.
If only we had an option to disable downvotes from non-subscribers!
Now that would be great!
And yes, I agree it would be preferable to have something that mods can opt into and configure to their community’s needs, only if needed.
Have you considered turning off downvotes?
That is definitely something to consider, though eliminating downvotes could be problematic since it messes with the way feeds get sorted, and also doesn’t stop downvote trolls from attacking from instances where it is enabled. I’ve seen a lot of this type of abuse on blahaj.zone and beehaw and the vots still get federated on remote users, they just aren’t visible on the instances which disable the downvotes.
You can’t disable downvotes per community only. Only instance-wide
I think they meant Instance-wide, which is something to consider, @ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone decided to disable them on Lemmy.blahaj.zone because downvotes are often used aggressively against people who are openly trans or visibly queer, and also for similar reasons we’re having problems, people like to use them to suppress things they personally disagree with, that includes behaviors like mass downvoting of communities and and subjects, up to even using multiple accounts do downvote multiple times. It’s also sometimes used as a method to harass or punish users, by downvoting every one of their posts and comments.
Downvote brigaders suck, they never contribute anything to the discussion, their only goal is to try and punish people, it was one of the many shitty problems on Reddit that we were told to just deal with. While it is mostly just annoying to get downvoted, so is spam in your, and I don’t see spammers being defended or people arguing for their right to post spam or arguing what does and doesn’t constitute spam. Nor do I see mods arguing that banning spammers violates “personal freedom” so I say that just like we do for spammers we should take out the trash.
personally I think that when it comes to people who will downvote everything in a community they either dislike/hate the community or are trying to manipulate or suppress its position. I think in these cases mods should ban the individuals doing it temporarily or permanently. Vote manipulation of this nature can be annoying for larger communities but it can be detrimental for small communities that don’t have much of a userbase and will get suppressed in the feed.
I do see the potential for abuse in mods that may attempt to game the system but in cases where mods abuse it they could be formally reported for it to admins, or informally reported in !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com.
It might be good to have specific instance wide policies against this type of malicious voting behavior as well since people who do this mess up the natural organic flow of the feeds, and also can end up hurting or suppressing communities by doing it.
So where’s the line defining malicious downvotes?
Someone who downvotes 60% of a community’s posts? 75%? 90%.
Youre setting yourself up as vote arbiter, telling users they can only vote the way you want. That’s just as problematic, maybe more so.
Yea, there are people who consistently downvote stuff, but isn’t that how votes work? Like another commenter, I too downvote a lot of AI garbage, because it’s garbage. Am I a malicious downvoter, no longer permitted my opinion?
The last few weeks I’ve consistently downvoted any political posts in communities where they clearly don’t belong (my opinion). Am I a malicious downvoter for that?
So where’s the line defining malicious downvotes?
Someone who downvotes 60% of a community’s posts? 75%? 90%.
Well to quote John oliver, “it’s somewhere, you draw it somewhere”. Though to be more specific. If someone downvotes a handful of posts in a community or if many different and people downvote one post that isn’t considered malicous. If one person downvotes every post in the community instead of blocking the community that would be considered malicious downvoting and indeed on many instances a violation of voting etiquette or even a violation of the rules, considering it vote manipulation or inorganic voting.
Other things to consider would be double voting, or use of other accounts to vote on content, such behavior is almost universally frowned upon on all Lemmy instances and is the fastest way to get banned from communities and even from sites as a whole.
The final factor is the content or type of the post. Posts being downvoted for being low quality or disliked generally isn’t considered malicious, posts being downvoted because you dislike the person or community is considered malicious and while we can’t be sure of your intent seeing that you downvoted every post in a community or every post by a user all at once gives a good idea of those intentions.
Another factor is community engagement. People who don’t engage with the community at all and downvote every post do not contribute. If a community has a lot of bad low quality content giving feedback on that content is invaluable. Downvoting is lazy or and basically non-existent feedback. And for communities which have evil or severely objectionable content, you should be reporting it to admins, not downvoting, downvoting hate speech is the equivalent to seeing someone assaulting or robbing someone else and yelling “boo 👎” and/or “you suck” instead of getting help. You may not be explicitly punished for either but it is considered unproductive and unfortunately is what most people on Lemmy do given the amount of hate speech on many instances.
Youre setting yourself up as vote arbiter, telling users they can only vote the way you want. That’s just as problematic, maybe more so.
It should be noted that actioning people for votes should only be done in extreme situations, such as the person downvoting everyone of that community’s posts without any interaction there whatsoever, or the person downvoting every one of a user’s posts/comments because they don’t like the person.
Another thing is that this idea is operating under the typical notion on Lemmy that users and moderators are already abusing their power, or just will abuse it. Which ultimately is not the case. There are definitely some users and moderators who do, the majority are not currently doing it though. I understand what you are worried about and that you think regular voters like you will get caught up in it or that your voting patterns will be seen as malicious, and maybe they are for all I know, I only saw small amounts of it, from what I did see though I don’t think you have as much to worry about as you think you do. Having bad takes isn’t going to get you banned, and even excessive downvoting is unlikely to give you a permanent ban unless you have a long history of it and overly confrontational behavior.
Yea, there are people who consistently downvote stuff, but isn’t that how votes work? Like another commenter, I too downvote a lot of AI garbage, because it’s garbage. Am I a malicious downvoter, no longer permitted my opinion?
If you downvote every post in a community without participating it usually says two things, the first is that you don’t like the content or community. The second is that you are trying to suppress or undermine the community.
In the first case it would be encouraged to block/hide/mute the community. This ensures that you will stop seeing it and content posted to it in your feed. Which is what benefits most people in this situation. The second option would absolutely be seen as malicious actions both by community moderators and admins alike, as you don’t simply dislike the community you are trying to suppress or undermine it by attempting to manipulate its position in feed, not simply voting on the content but attempting to shove the community itself down. This you could absolutely expect a ban for, both from their mods but even from instance admins front the entire site, as instance admins agree that brigading and vote manipulation are unacceptable, and that it would be preferable to do something about it. You downvoting specific content you see for being low quality doesn’t count as that. People downvoting whole communities for being AI-gen communities does, and downvoting an entire user’s post history because they created a decentralized community driven AI generation platform. You voting organically on feed items as you see them doesn’t count as abuse, and the idea that actioning abuse would trickle down to you is a slippery slope argument.
However if you do feel like you engage in behavior that seems to violate those principles like downvoting against a person’s profile, downvoing an entire community, or even voting with multiple accounts to make things go in your favor or against the person’s favor. I would say that you should work on changing your patterns to avoid such behavior. Downvoting is a matter of public expression, and while it is binary unlike comments it can still be misued the all the same. A person who trolls in comments or lashes out at people is labeled a troll and gets banned, a person who does it with downvotes may get away with it easier but they are still a troll, and they are liable to get banne like most trolls do. However people who are lost and realize their behavior was unproductive or unacceptable can indeed change and stop being trolls and if their actions weren’t too harsh they may be welcomed back.
The last few weeks I’ve consistently downvoted any political posts in communities where they clearly don’t belong (my opinion). Am I a malicious downvoter for that?
You are using downvotes as intended from what you have said, you are not committing the abuse I or @Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com have described, at least I do not think you have. I would encourage you report content which does not belong as that can help remove out of place content and clean up communities but failure to do that is not abusive voting, brigading, or vote manipulation. So far from what you’ve said and the small amount I’ve seen you are not someone who should be worried about mods and admins taking action against abusive voting.
I understand your concern, I too was like you in the past and concerned when hearing admins discuss abusive voters, brigading, and vote manipulation. I was just a lurker who barely commented and did more voting than visible interaction. I didn’t think what they were saying was real, that it was over-exaggerated, or even on occasion that the admins want to screw me over. But in time as I posted more, commented more, and eventually started my own communities or was invited to moderate communities for others the negative effects of vote manipulation became much more apparent, and I learned to realize that it was never people like me who were targeted, but truly malicious people, who have little to no redeemability. People who would downvote almost automatically without care or opinion, people who downvote not because things are low quality, or even that they dislike them, but because they want to make the community fail, they want to punish the person behind the post. Some of these people aren’t even real, they are robots set up by people for suppression purposes. I was never a target of these moderation policies, and neither are you right now.
I realize that I wrote a lot, get used to it. I have a lot of things to say even when someone thinks they’re posting a worthless gotcha argument. I write comment content knowing that it won’t only be seen by the person I’m replying to but by others as well, so even if you choose not to read it, it’ll still be beneficial for the others who see the thread. If you want to get something out of it I would suggest reading it but if you don’t feel like it it’s not like I’m going to try and force you.
