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Is this the typical behaviour of fediverse users? Posts in Apple and Nintendo communities immediately get downvoted by people disliking the companies. Can’t they just block the communities?
(media.piefed.social)
There are various philosophies about how fediverse participation should work. Some would say you should block a community you don't like (but that is not harmful) rather than downvoting its posts (because downvoting is supposed to be a signal that the content doesn't belong on the community where it's posted)
Others vote on posts regardless of their communities, preferring to try to curate the fediverse at large rather than their own feeds
In my opinion, it is presumptuous and arrogant to attempt to curate the fediverse at large according to one's own preferences.
Piefed has the answer:
It is arrogant to think the context of a community overrides anyone's personal preferences on how to interact with the voting system.
I think there's an argument to be made though, that if you're a person who browses the "all" feed rather than subscriptions or individual communities, that there's a point where you should block a particular community you don't want to see rather than continuously downvoting it. When the content isn't harmful but you merely dislike it, it seems reasonable to expect the user to curate their experience at least a little.
There is also an argument that expecting everyone to agree with and follow the unwritten rules of 'voting correctly' is just a vocal minority trying to impose their will on all users.
Generally I limit to subs but browse All occasionally to find new communities. Part of this process is upvoting and down voting stuff and seeing which communities has more stuff I want and less stuff I thought was worth downvoting. I then sub or block after that point.
That is how I notice spammed slop as part of blocking a community. No, I won't be going back to remove down votes before blocking just because the community is about spamming slop and the posts fit the sub. Harm isn't a down voting requirement.
Those rules might not be unwritten depending on the community and/or instance the post is on.
I don't personally disagree with voting however you want to while browsing, it's just intentionally continuing to downvote a user or community when you could have blocked and moved on that I object to