this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2025
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Is strictly negative participation in a community healthy for lemmy? (hackertalks.com)
submitted 2 weeks ago by jet@hackertalks.com to c/fedigrow@lemm.ee
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If a niche community has people that persistently downvote every post

  1. is that healthy for the community?
  2. is that healthy for lemmy in general?

Examples that come to mind are political communities, linus tech tips, diet communities, etc. There will be a group of people who will not make comments, posts, but will strictly downvote everything that is in the community.

This is a continuation of a discussion @Blaze@feddit.org and I started elsewhere, but it deserves it's own space for meta-moderation discussion.

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[–] ptz@dubvee.org 13 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (3 children)

Personally, I think no to both points.

I liken it to people intentionally showing up somewhere they clearly don't want to be just to "boo" people minding their own business. See something in /all you don't like and throw it a downvote? Whatever. But making a conscious effort to go in and/or consistently downvote stuff in that community is crossing a line, IMO. At that point, just block the community and move on.

Mods can't (currently?) do much about it, but on my own instance, I can detect that kind of activity with database scripts. They run on a schedule and, after a user hits a certain threshold of strictly negative "participation", the script will ban them from the community.

[–] TheAgeOfSuperboredom@lemmy.ca 9 points 2 weeks ago

I think that analogy falls apart because of Lemmy's architecture, which makes it a little bit more complicated. In real life, the reach of people is limited. Extending reach IRL requires setting up external tools, like broadcasting, so there is some (albeit small) cost there.

But in Lemmy's case, reach is immediately unlimited (barring an instance being blocked by your instance of course). Instances will automatically pull and display your content with no additional effort on your part. Lemmy is even stranger than other federated software because an instance can host a diverse variety of communities, so defederation may not always be the right choice.

I agree with you if it was like going to a private forum, but Lemmy's open architecture is causing me to think about this a little more. Mass downvoting could be a signal that a community may be behaving in an inappropriate way. Or, if a community is organizing mass downvotes, that could also be a signal that they are behaving inappropriately. But the beauty of federation is that then is up to the community on the instance (ultimately the admins) to decide how to react.

Not to mention that in real life people do go to private events to protest. There were all sorts of protests when Tucker Carlson went on tour. I suppose they may not have been in the venue itself, so a bit different as well, but that sort of thing does happen.

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 7 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Quick question for you: is it possible to see downvotes as a mod (not an admin) using Tesseract?

The feature is avaiable in the backend since 0.19.4 (https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/4386), but never got implemented in the fronted.

[–] ptz@dubvee.org 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Oh, yep. Totally works. I'll have that available to mods in 1.4.28 (releasing in the next day or two).

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 5 points 2 weeks ago

Amazing !

[–] ptz@dubvee.org 5 points 2 weeks ago (11 children)

It can be. I heard that at some point mods were going to be able to see those for their communities, but I wasn't aware it got implemented.

I'll work on in my dev branch and let you know.

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 5 points 2 weeks ago

That would be great, thanks!

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[–] insomniac_lemon@lemmy.cafe 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

I can detect that kind of activity with database scripts. They run on a schedule and, after a user hits a certain threshold of strictly negative “participation”, the script will ban them from the community

A while back (on a different instance) I got messaged by a user doing something similar after I downvoted something like 3 posts with weeks+ of span between votes. This was also a "community" of just them posting comics daily (and not an obscure one, so there was another user doing the same). They said it was in error but still silently blocked/banned me after (this was with very little interaction beyond the explanation).

I understand if it's every post or if it were original heartfelt content/multiple genuine users in a niche community etc, but without that context it just seems silly like it's an ego thing.

To me, if it's worth a reply it probably isn't worth a downvote and vice-versa. Also it seems perfectly fine to me to judge content or posting context/habits if not taken to the extreme.

[–] ptz@dubvee.org 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Yeah, I'm talking more people who just spam downvotes than anything. There's definitely an ego angle on the mod side, for sure, but in my own case I let the script and its thresholds take care of that and just review later.

In the case of my script, it also accounts for upvotes (and the overall up/down ratio and number of submissions for them in the community) as well as the account's age. I don't want to publish the thresholds to avoid people gaming them, but I've got it pretty well tuned to avoid all but the weirdest false positives. It's not perfect (tends to err on the side of caution), but at least it's fair and removes ego/emotion from the mix.

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 11 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

My personal view - its a net negative,

for the community itself. It is a chilling effect, discouraging people from posting. Yes the votes don't matter, but they are a social signal, and people (especially infrequent posters) can be hyper sensitive to that.

For Lemmy as a whole, I think its also a net negative, people only participating to rain on other peoples parade isn't driving engagement (see above), but it means their feed is filled with posts they don't like, reducing the quality and interaction of their experience.

Possible Solutions:

  1. Ability to voluntarily unlist from the ALL feed for niche communities.

  2. Moderation bot that looks at strictly negative interactions in a community and help those users "block" the community. i.e. someone who never posts comments, or ever finds anything positive in the community.

Thoughts @Blaze@feddit.org ?

Context - Right now I moderate two communities that are basically my personal journals, since they are so niche and don't really get alot of interaction, but.... it is lots of content for lemmy which I think is a net positive for the platform.

[–] celeste@kbin.earth 12 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

If I'm making the effort to comment or post on topic in a community which mostly gets posts from one or two people, and i get immediate downvotes, I'm going to assume that's a signal I broke an unwritten rule. I probably wouldn't try posting there again.

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 4 points 2 weeks ago

That would make sense if you are assuming that people are acting on good faith...

Can't make that assumption online imho

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 4 points 2 weeks ago

Good point

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 3 points 2 weeks ago

great point!

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Thank you for the post.

About systematically downvoting content, that's indeed a net negative. There was a previous thread almost a year ago on the same topic: https://lemmy.ml/post/13108690

The key thing is that mods should be able to see votes since almost a year (https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/4386), but because nobody implemented the feature on the front-end, they still can't.

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

People who run instances can see the votes already, so we can automate some possible solutions now.

Thanks for the reference to the previous discussion, I had no idea.

One possible response to this would be a slashdot style system where you only get a few downvotes randomly assigned in a interval, so you have to be choosy with them.

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 4 points 2 weeks ago

People who run instances can see the votes already, so we can automate some possible solutions now.

It's definitely doable, that would probably help a few mods.

One possible response to this would be a slashdot style system where you only get a few downvotes randomly assigned in a interval, so you have to be choosy with them.

Indeed

[–] The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world 9 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

If you think your community has a real problem with this, sock-puppet accounts from people who have it out for an individual or community for some reason, the admins might be able to help.

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Right now I don't think I'm dealing with anything super malicious just the standard:

Unhappy Camper

[–] insomniac_lemon@lemmy.cafe 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Nah, it looks more like you run a contentious community and are playing shocked that people who you know disagree with you downvote your posts when they see them in all. And some posts have 0.

Some might even just dislike the food presented, like the boiled in butter video.

And to be clear I am far from a vegan, I really like to sautée vegetables* in butter. I don't need meat for that to be good, but meat and vegetables are so much better prepared in a meal together. Also too-tall burgers that need to be deconstructed are a failure.

*= recently found out even celery and radishes are good this way, much better than raw

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[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 9 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I think, it can be important, because there are certain niche communities, which themselves have made it their mission to shit on the interest of others. Prime example is that weirdo linuxsucks community. It's two folks who spend far too much time to find the wildest misinformation, which they think makes Linux look bad.
Leaving aside that it really is just absolutely terrible content, which I cannot imagine anyone browsing /all could possibly want to see, it also is just negative about something that people here enjoy, which I think is negative for Lemmy. Sometimes, they'll even post stuff that's borderline offensive and when you report it, well, guess who the moderators of that community are. Without contacting the instance admins to resolve that, downvoting is the only method of moderating a rogue community like that.

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Without contacting the instance admins to resolve that,

Should something be done over this?

[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 weeks ago

Welp, I wanted to link the most recent borderline offensive post, only to see that the newest post is nothing but offensive. I have reported it to the community moderators (one of which is the OP) to follow due process and give them a chance to right themselves. But yeah, if it isn't gone by the time the guy has made the next post and therefore should've seen the report, then I'm reporting it to the instance admins directly.

Apparently, the moderators/posters are now locking each post to prevent people from commenting. That's how you know they really add to Lemmy.

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I suppose what I want is the api vocabulary to unsubscribe a user from a community without necessarily blocking them. The effect being this community wont show up in the downvoters all feed.

[–] Corgana@startrek.website 4 points 2 weeks ago

The purpose and shape of a community should be up to the moderator. If someone wants to grow a "community" full of complaining and whining (and there are absolutely people who do) that should be up to the mods.

That said, I think downvote abuse is super annoying, not healthy for "Lemmy in general" and would personally prefer it banned in communities I participate in.

[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

The voting system is, essentially, crowdsourced moderation. Once a community is too large for the moderator team to handle every single post and comment, votes can pick up the slack. Downvotes probably shouldn't be active until a certain community size.

[–] Kichae@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Communities probably shouldn't get so large that they can't be actively moderated. Part of what a distributed system like Lemmy allows for is manageable communities.

We don't all need to be in the same noise factory, shouting into the crowd just trying to be heard. That actually tends to lead to somewhat hostile behaviour. Smaller, active communities with active moderation, and the same names and avatars showing up over and over again helps create connection, and helps keep people focused on what they want to say, rather than just getting noticed in the first place.

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[–] jet@hackertalks.com 3 points 2 weeks ago

That is a great idea, it does neatly solve the current problem

[–] ericjmorey 3 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Lemmy needs to allow communities to ignore the votes of non-subscribed users. It should be the default setting that a community owner can override. But it will never happen. So the lemmy ecosystem will remain not very diverse in its user base unless there are multiple clusters of federated instances that are not (widely) federated with the other clusters.

Hopefully Sublinks can get to production and implement this.

[–] rimu@piefed.social 8 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

PieFed will implement this feature by the end of the weekend.

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 3 points 2 weeks ago

Amazing!

[–] ericjmorey 2 points 2 weeks ago

That's awesome!

Thanks!

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[–] jet@hackertalks.com 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

That is a great idea, only subscribers can vote, its elegant in its simplicity!

Never heard of sublinks, but I'll do some research.

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 5 points 2 weeks ago

Never heard of sublinks, but I’ll do some research.

Don't get your hopes too high, project has more or less stopped due to real life priorities of the devs.

https://piefed.social/ should be more interesting

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Hopefully Sublinks can get to production and implement this.

Has development resumed? I'm on the Matrix chat, things have been still for a few months now

[–] ericjmorey 3 points 2 weeks ago

Not that I can tell.

[–] EABOD25@lemm.ee 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

https://lemm.ee/post/52051775

You'll probably appreciate reading this

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