Was recently banned from a whole bunch of DB0 communities for, as best as I can gather, downvoting once when I viewed by All (potentially accidentally while scrolling).
Important notes:
- I don’t use scripts.
- I don’t mass-downvote Communities. If I see a post I generally don’t like when browsing All, I may downvote one post, block the Community and move on.
- Some of the communities I was banned from don’t have any posts in them so I wouldn’t have been able to downvote anything.
- Of all of these Communities, in my history I downvoted one post in one of them. Voting in this manner is not vote manipulation. It’s quite literally a feature of the platform and as a mod of another Community, I would consider it pretty good etiquette.
- One of my bans reads “Appeal Granted, not a brigading member” but I’m still banned.
- I don’t troll.
WTF is going on here?
EDIT - Updated Info from the conversation below: In the initial image, you can see two “ban waves.”
The 10 bans three months ago stem from a single downvote in one Community. It was @Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com See here: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/34853477
I was called out by name for a single downvote and culled from a score of Communities I did not participate in by them.
The other bans from two months ago are from four total downvotes over a 10-month timeframe in one Community.
I have also stated in this thread that I don’t have issues with AI-gen images, but there are shoddy ones and well-done ones.
EDIT 2: Now unbanned from the ten Communities listed as “3 months ago” in my initial image, but have been banned from three more because of this thread with the reason given being “self-proclaimed anti-AI brigader” which are two things I didn’t claim to be. God dammit Lemmy…
I don’t make it a habit of downvoting images simply because they’re AI-gen, but there are well-done ones and horrible ones just like any images. Do they really ban for simply downvoting ANY AI image? That’s… kind of a lot.
I’m still trying to get my head around people giving votes that much attention. Maybe Lemmy has started getting refugees from other places that live and die by the arrows.
Someone go in there and do the same thing and see what happens. I would but you’ve probably picked up on my apathy by this point.
The mods that banned me for ‘systemic down voting’ and ‘anti-ai harassment’ because I down voted a few AI posts and didn’t feel bad also lectured me about how horrible down voting is and how much it hurts the fediverse.
My upvote to down vote ratio is far better than either of those two mods.
I’ve seen quite a few people banned for downvotes in comms. It always makes me wonder what they think lurkers do.
They assume anyone who down votes without commenting is brigading.
Oh i know that. I’m saying it’s crazy because it just bans more lurkers than anyone. We’re probably on the same page.
Yeah, the mods who are doing this appear to believe lurkers don’t exist and anyone who doesn’t make a comment but down votes is part of a brigade.
I just said to another here in this thread: Downvotes hurt visibility. Downvote trolls can be a problem for small communities trying to build up. I managed to discover the serial downvoters on my old lemm.ee comm and when I banned them (about 4 of them?) it had a huge impact. They didn’t all downvote /everything/ but they downvoted a lot of things, and no contribution. And if they got in early, they could sink new threads. Now, I wouldn’t just downvote randoms for occasional downvotes - but if I kept seeing the same names on threads (and they never actually engaged with the community) with no discernable patterns - I might.
Made a huge difference.
that happens on reddit to, but with reporting. if you report when someone dint respond or you dint respond to them, the mods get mad enough to ban you, or if they feel like even if the report was report-worthy, the mods might not think so.
Because votes = views.
If you make something and it instantly gets to -2 within seconds because of bot/trolls it means no one will ever see it.
Well luckily it was just AI slop and they didn’t actually make anything.
Creativity is in the idea.
Drawing is dexterity not creativity.
What is important is that what they made reflected what they wanted to, not that they used a pencil or a stylus.
Disagree. Creativity is in the idea, the composition, and the execution.
A prompter hardly even has the idea in the first place.
On top of that: “drawing” is labor.
Tell that to Andy Warhol.
Preach, brother!
Meh, I actually have a very successful side business selling things with AI slop all over them. So there is something I make with AI: money. I make more money from that than my retirement check. I steal from the lying capitalist megacorps. lol
That’s embarrassing. I’m surprised you would admit that even in pseudonymity.
Embarrassing for you, maybe. Obviously, not embarrassing for me.
I’m just riding the wave while it lasts. I don’t treat it like a real job. More like skimming cream off the top while the corrupt capitalist system lumbers along. I know the window for making money this way is probably short, but that just makes it sweeter.
The megacorps are raking in billions, and I get to sneak in, steal the product that they’ve already stolen, and laugh all the way to my tiny bank. They build the machines, pump out the slop, and flood the world with it. I just show up with a spoon.
Picture a giant bull in a field, stuffing its face. Flies swarm around it, laying eggs in the shit. And I’m a little scruffy bird perched on its back, snacking on the flies and soaking up the ride. The bull does all the work. I just feast on the ecosystem it creates.
I grow fat off the slop that megacorp capitalists overproduce. I use them, instead of them using me. That’s the game, friend. Delicious.
You’re fighting a fight you can’t win. AI isn’t going anywhere. I’m just adapting to the situation. And laughing.
“Fuck you, i got mine”-ass comment.
Despicable.
Me taking glee in stealing from a capitalist megacorp is not a “fuck you, I got mine” comment. You can do the exact same thing I’m doing.
I like and use AI. You can too, but you choose not to. That’s all on you.
That’s very capitalist of you
I’m using their own methods against them. No regrets.
Stealing from the rich to give to the poor. You’re distributing the wealth to the poor, right?
I sponsor a family with Compassion International. (https://www.compassion.com/sponsor_a_child/) One of the better .orgs, but I don’t like how they don’t give the money directly to the families themselves. They give to the community, which is fine, but they should be more specific about that. I signed up before I knew those details, but I get such special letters from the child that I support w this program, that I don’t wanna cancel.
I sponsor two different families through Unbound. (https://www.unbound.org/) One of the top orgs for sponsoring a child. Both families are in Guatemala. I exchange letters and videos with both families. And this org actually sends 90% of donations directly to sponsored families, giving them control to meet their specific needs rather than funneling aid through preset programs.
I donate to the elementary and middle schools where I used to work as an affective needs teacher before I retired. Both schools serve children in underserved communities. I also regularly visit local thrift stores to buy children’s clothing to donate to the elementary school. The clothes are kept in the principal’s office and used when students have accidents (bathroom, playground, P.E., or art class, etc.) so they can change at school. Many parents can’t leave work during the day, so this helps prevent embarrassment for the child and keeps them comfortable without disrupting their learning.Please call your local elementary school and see if they need donations like this as well, and ask what sizes they need. Solid color clothes with no logo or graphics are preferred.
I buy children’s books for the Free Little Library that I have in front of my house so that it is always stocked with books. I also buy and donate books to the Free Little Library in front of my former schools.
I’m a member of the Red Cross and I volunteer there by transporting donated blood from donation centers to hospitals. I do that 2 days a week, and that takes gas.
I donate to the teacher’s union that I was a part of.
I also donate to a local Socialist Workers Party office in my city. And regularly donate to their main org as well. I also started and maintain SWP comms here on Lemmy.
I also keep up a spare room in my house for friends (or friends of friends) that need a quick place to stay in order to get back on their feet for whatever life throws at them.
I don’t have a lot of extra, but what I have goes to those projects.
Now list what you do, friend. Because I bet you earn way more money than I do.
every time i learn something new about you it’s so on-brand
Right?! Thanks, friend! :)
Not related to the OP here, but downvote trolls can be a problem for small communities trying to build up. I managed to discover the serial downvoters on my old lemm.ee comm and when I banned them (about 4 of them?) it had a huge impact. They didn’t all downvote /everything/ but they downvoted a lot of things, and no contribution. And if they got in early, they could sink new threads. Now, I wouldn’t just ban randoms for occasional downvotes - but if I kept seeing the same names on threads (and they never actually engaged with the community) with no discernable patterns - I might.
Made a huge difference.
Thank you for limiting your bans to people who were actual serial down voters and not just someone who happened to down vote a single post.
Removed by mod
Fair enough. I tend to block before down voting and that’s rare. Haven’t thought of how much votes actually matter, but obviously it does on the smaller scale.
I should also add that 2 or the accounts I banned literally had no post or comment history despite being active for years. Their only purpose was to downvote.
reddit monitors upvotes/downvotes heavily, maybe they are coming from reddit, in addition reddit are using other nebelous reasons to ban people in a sub.
No, they don’t, at least not the site wide admins.
This community is part of dbzer0, so if you were banned from the instance you wouldn’t be able to post here either.
It looks like you pissed off on moderator of a bunch of comms and they banned you from all of theirs. Based off another commentor’s link, this seems to have happened when those comms were being hit by waves of drive by downvoting so you may have been caught in the cross fire.
What is ‘drive by down voting’?
People (or bots) who go through a thread or comm and just downvote everything without otherwise engaging with the thread or comm.
It personally doesn’t bother me, but I can see why some find it distasteful.
They shouldn’t be. I’ve messaged the two mods and asked them to respond, because I don’t know the details.
We found the answer (kinda)! It was @Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com See here: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/34853477
I was called out by name for a single downvote and culled from a score of Communities I did not participate in by them.
“Create more slop” is, in fact, a message I disagree with rather strongly and did downvote that (and only that) post. I PM’d the the mod in response to that post:
So we’ve effectively solved the first part, but not the three Stable Diffusion parts… Those also seem to line up with another single downvote a month later. Again, hardly brigading or vote manipulation.
EDIT: Huh. Looks like we had someone in this thread downvoting nearly every post in here.
if it is draconic who’s downvoting that would be a hilarious lack of self reflection. Is there any way to check?
Mods or Admin can. I can’t.
Yes, a few of the mods will ban anyone who downvotes AI or misinformation without making a comment or because you downvoted ‘too many times’ or some other bullshit. My ‘systemic downvoting’ and ‘anti-ai harassment’ community bans are for downvoting a few posts and not being sorry about it.
i discovered i have several community bans for being an anti-ai troll. i find that so odd because like… i’m not trolling, i genuinely have concerns about a litany of issues surrounding ai such as the environmental cost, the double standard of corporate theft being okay and piracy being a serious crime, the ways the ai corporation ceos want to use ai vs how any technology should benefit the populace. i have a viewpoint, not an agenda. i also think and post about a wide variety of other topics. that said, if an ai community wants to block me, that’s fine, i was probably going to block them too. not because i think they’re wrong to have their community, but because i have zero interest in engaging there. it’s like how i block all communities in languages i don’t speak. it’s not an act of me censoring or hating them. it’s just me cleaning up my feed because it doesn’t make sense to be there
I work in IT and think AI is the second biggest threat to the planet in the next 10 years.
samesies. it’s grifters leading the blind in that field and it’s already had devastating effects in certain areas
100% guarantee that LLMs have already been instantiated on murderbot hardware
You don’t need to speculate or go “I guarantee”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI-assisted_targeting_in_the_Gaza_Strip
But on Lemmy, that’s a rare thing. Most have an agenda.
that should teach ya