A number of us have at least one stalker user that just follows us around and down votes every post/every message we make, and in my case I think this user is u/Corporis. In my opinion, such behavior is not valid forum behavior and removing such users entirely from the platform would be not censorship, since these users are abusing the platform's voting system with what is, ultimately, a form of spam.
Thoughts?
Interesting. If that's the case, I apologize to u/Corporis for the accusation.
Also, if that's the case, could somebody who is an admin here (How does one message @ an admin, in a comment? Who are the admins, even?) figure out who these abusive users are and remove them so that they don't pollute the voting system with spam votes. It's one thing to have a bias against somebody and down vote them more often than you might otherwise, but the idea of just clicking somebody's username and then downloading all of their posts and comments is definitely spam.
I also don't think it's that user. I do have a short list but I'm not willing to share it.
Admin should, but they don't. Don't know why they don't have that power. Also simply recheck and ban repeat accounts doing it. It should be easy to identify. It's a pattern. Not separate. They're doing it like a bot. Except it isn't a bot, it's somebody logging in at different times, then attacking every comment after they log in. It takes hours sometimes before the comments get down voted. It's every comment.
Admin should just get rid of down votes altogether. They're pathetic.
But the annoying thing is this user is a really disgusting troll to be doing that. It's stalking, and not normal disagreement, they're doing it to a lot of other people.
I disagree with getting rid of down votes. Down votes are a useful tool for sorting through content and determining whether or not the content is considered by others to be controversial or positive or negative, etc. for example, I might come across a comment and it jives with me in a certain way because I might be gullible for a specific kind of factoid, but then I notice that about 50% of people down voted and I might think a little bit more critically about it. Just like Amazon reviews; it's not the review format that's broken, it's just the lack of effort put into policing it correctly.
By having down votes, they're an attack on somebody speaking. It isn't disagreement. Disagreement you can just ignore or block. Down votes attack what somebody else says, often without even debating it with them. Sure they might be an asshole or even wrong. But why would you attack them for it.
They're also a tool of trolls attacking everything said for no other reason apart from trolling.
They're a dystopian mind trick. It sooner suppresses speech, into that is right and that's wrong. An agenda to control speech for profit and manipulation. It isn't free speech where there is no wrong answer.
Get rid of them, they aren't free speech.
Why not have a system wherein verified names can downvote, and alts are free to have but can't downvote? That would reduce the number of troll army members. I think Truth Social will go that way.
Edit: Ah, now I know that new accounts can't downvote; they have to age. That suggests that the troll alts we see were prepared and let sit to age before being used to downvote.