The mod banning these users is the same mod who made the posts they downvoted. This is mod abuse, turning the downvote button into an auto-self-ban button.
The message is “If you disagree with me, you will be banned”
Monitoring and banning users for using lemmy as intended to signal boost your opinion should be grounds to have all mod privileges removed. This behaviour undermines the integrity of the server and the wider fediverse.
Funny, about a year ago, I remember commenting downvotes should be noise filters, not “disagree” buttons.
I got downvoted.
i’ve seen a bunch of stuff about how that’s the way it’s supposed to be on Lemmy, but obviously people aren’t doing that…
really if that was the official original intention, it’s a UI issue…
something like Up Arrow and Poop Emoji instead of down arrow… or maybe more buttons, eg:
up, down, poop, or asparagus emoji… and various sorting options based on that….