There's no easy solution to this, because people who aren't doing stupid shit like that are still getting caught in the crossfire.
I don't envy your position. Its the main reason I haven't started a community, even though I've had the itch to make a proper modded minecraft and kratom communities.
I do get it. You have to protect your community first and foremost... I just wish there was a better solution. I've been thinking and thinking about it and coming up empty, tbh.
Yeah, it just seems like an all around bad idea that had good initial intentions of transparency. I've thought about this a lot, honestly. Something like "views" won't really work. I sort of started thinking that a pair of glasses might do. That's it, nothing else.
The glasses symbol would count as a "Read this!" which can be construed as "I read this" or "you should read this", preceeded by the number of people that read it. Heck, just getting rid of downvotes would work. I usually save my downvotes for extremely hateful or prejudiced posts/comments, not comments I disagree with.
In the end, downvotes are the most abused. At least a "# read this" tag would denote the most useful or contributing comments. Sure, people will abuse it for their own benefit, but at least it can't be used to shit on people or communities.
Its not the best solution, but I agree that downvotes and upvotes are becoming archaic relics of a bygone era. There must be a better and more modern solution.
After that point it becomes harassment, yes. What I'm talking about here is that not everyone is mass downvoting and they still get banned. Some people are scrolling through sometimes completely separate communities, downvoting a couple things, and getting banned from totally different, unrelated communities. That's the part that shouldn't be okay.
And I agree with you. I think the whole voting system is literally a dopamine chase for most and honestly not really relevant to a constructive debate. It seems Lemmy overcomplicates this by letting people see votes, though like I said, I haven't gone about finding out how. The only thing I like about voting is that it lets me know that people have read what I've written.
Its good that you have that view of being banned, but others can be genuinely hurt, which starts shit like this (this whole fiasco isn't just about AI), and then the whole instance gets dragged into it. Back when I was on reddit, I asked a simple question in a sub. A mod came in and started being completely rude to me for no reason, no matter how much I tried to discuss things with them. It got heated on both sides. The mod changed all his replies to nice, friendly ones and banned me so I got left looking like a clown.
People like that mod are people that do get too passionate about things like reddit and lemmy, and they can be hurtful to others. I'm not just saying that its db0; its mostly power-crazy mods, no matter which instance.
It's going to take a while to do that now. People are all riled up right now and really should cool off a bit. I know what you mean, though, because this instance's stance on AI is basically my stance on it.
There are great applications for it, but the government and big corp are pushing it into a disgusting direction, as they do with everything they get their hands on that could give them power or money.
However, it doesn't feel good to have it happen. Especially since db0 is an instance against the abuse of power. You go about your day and see a comment you disagree with. You downvote it. The commenter winds up being a mod somewhere else and bans you from their communities.
That doesn't seem fair, does it? And using the excuse of "preemptively banning an AI downvote troll" is not a very good one. If they had been banned after they had gone in to just downvote everyone talking about AI in a community, okay. But you shouldn't be able to "Minority Report" people.
Som of the bans were used as a form of disrespect. You can't tell me some of the bans weren't done just to piss the other person off because they were pissed off, no matter which way you sugar coat it. If you don't like being downvoted, you probably just shouldn't comment or post on any platform with that mechanic.
I have never even looked into how to see who's downvoted me. I don't want to. That person had an opinion that didn't align with mine. That's it and that's all it should be. The act of viewing and banning who's downvoted who should really only be used when there's an obvious troll in the community who's already mass downvoted everything in the community.
Its getting heated on both sides from what I've seen floating around. I have to stand more with db0, because the other side just seems to be openly marketing hate-mongering. Which of course is going to bait a rise out of some here. We haven't been going around slandering people who hate AI, but I've seen people going around openly slandering this instance for liking it. That's what happens when you create a community solely based on the hate of a subject. Its just a breeding ground for negative energy.
I've been on both sides. I'm not really cool with AI stealing art and prose to add onto their repertoire, but I have self-hosted LLMs and enjoy using them locally. There's a place for AI, and unfortunately big corp is pushing an agenda that places AI in a horrible light, so its no wonder people hate it. That doesn't mean that they should create a hate-based community, but hey, that's a part of real freedom.
On the other side of this coin, we have people here who stoke the flames by pre-banning people from communities they moderate in wild displays of power abuse, or joining in on fuck_ai to openly speak out in a community where they're obviously not wanted and in general just taking a stick to the beehive. I've seen plenty on this side that disregard the rules and beliefs of anarchy, instigate arguments, and flout the premise of one of the ideas that db0 stands against- abuse of power.
Like I said, I can't blame some of them. Its hard to ignore some of the obvious slander that db0 gets sometimes, but it doesn't mean we should openly validate them by getting hot around the collar about it. We shouldn't take the high road, either. Pretentious high-horsing is just as bad as openly getting angry. Let AI-haters openly bash AI and try to understand that there is a vindicated reason for it. Its not us or even AI itself, its how AI is being marketed and used by big corp. We need to push that we don't believe in that, the same as they don't, without swinging bats at the first hater we come across.
The best thing db0 can do right now is be respectful. I get it, we're not exactly receiving that same respect sometimes, but stooping down to low levels of disrespect just based on the venom that spits out of an individual's mouth is just not the answer. Whereas I don't think this will get as bad as .ml or hexbear levels of hatred, I really don't want us to be the next in that spotlight.
Death threats and transphobia are just the cries of the few disgusting extremists. I agree that they need to stop immediately. I tend to dislike anything extremist. Their respective instances should be taking action against those individuals. If they don't, I have no doubts that Lemmy will stand against them as a whole. Transphobia in general isn't and shouldn't be tolerated anywhere, and usually isn't tolerated here at all.
In the case of those individuals, I just see children throwing a tantrum and trying anything to scare or upset mods. That's when slurs and scare tactics pop their ugly heads out of the grass, and they should be ashamed for just thinking those things, let alone acting on them. But that's not instance vs. instance. That's a handful of people in an instance being angry at a handful of people from another instance. There should be no reason to start a war of many based on the battle of a few.
So I don't disagree with you, but the context makes all the difference in the world. Its a very complicated and complex situation.
tl;dr: This whole thing sucks, but at least we're taking steps on our side to solve it.
To those who actually use or need a menstruation tracker app, if you use Android there is an open source, free option called Bluemoon on F-Droid.
I was wondering if you guys would catch the latest shitstorm on this. Definitely a necessary precaution. Its a good idea, and I hope it will be enough.
Its getting to the point where people are blanket terming us as unhinged and blocking the whole instance because debates are getting heated. :(
I used to go to the retirement home in the cul-de-sac down the road. No kids really thought about going there, they'd just stay on their own roads and streets. The old lonely folks there were practically waiting at the door, all outside lights on. My friend and I would make out like bandits every year with big bars, popcorn balls, homemade fudge and cake bars. Literal pillowcases full of top shelf candy and baked goods.
Oh. I was under the impression that blocking an instance would block all users of that instance as well... I've never blocked an instance before, so I'm not sure how any of this works. My mistake, lol. 😅
Some of it is, yeah. I think a lot of it is pro-technology. I'm a little iffy on AI myself. I want to be an author, and I feel that these days I'd be accused of using AI to write.
Hell, I enjoy using semi-colons, but have had to stop because people think that any semi-colon in a post or comment is AI generated.
Hope I caught you before you hit that block button. I wish you the best of luck and for what its worth, I'm sorry this happened.
Takes a lot more to fully deshittify it, though. I've been down that road. So much registry diving, so many third party apps, strongarming uninstallations of bloatware through brute force, and just all around weeks of work.
When the screenshot shit was announced the first time, I just got tired of looking for workarounds to disable or remove Microsoft's active attempts of policing, spying, and triple-dip profiting off it's paying customers.