this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2026
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But sadly do on piefed
How does piefed treat them differently?
https://lemmy.world/comment/22309290
Please elaborate.
Piefed ties your voting habits and how often downvoted so it can flag you if either downvoted too much or down vote up and down sort of equally.
Basically if someone goes against hive mind once or twice can cause getting removed or limited on their instance.
https://join.piefed.social/2024/06/22/piefed-features-for-growing-healthy-communities/
When someone is consistently getting downvoted it’s likely they are a problem. PieFed provides a list of accounts with low karma, sorted by lowest first. Clicking on their user name takes you to their profile which shows all their posts and comments in one place. Every profile has “Ban” and “Ban + Purge” buttons that have instance-wide effects and are only visible to admins.
The ‘Rep’ column is their reputation. As you can see, some people have been downvoted thousands of times. They’re not going to change their ways, are they?
The ‘Reports’ column is how often they’ve been reported, IP shows their IP address and ‘Source’ shows which website linked to PieFed when they initially registered. If an unfriendly forum starts sending floods of toxic people to your instance, spotting them is easy. (In the image above all the accounts are from other instances so we don’t know their IP address or Source). Find people who downvote too much
Once an account has made a few votes, an “attitude” is calculated each time they vote which is the percentage of up votes vs. down votes.
People who downvote more than upvote tend to be the ones who get in fights a lot and say snarky, inflammatory and negative things. If you were at a dinner party, would you want them around? By reviewing the list of people with bad attitudes you can make decisions about who you want to be involved in our communities.
All these accounts have been downvoting a lot (Attitude column) and receiving some downvotes (Rep column). Their profiles are worth a look and then making a decision about whether they’re bringing down the vibe or not.
Every single time I see someone with a low reputation warning, they are toxic users.
It's an imperfect tool, but it helps identify trolls and sea lions.
Except it appears designed for that not actually detection of the bad users. And does nothing when the toxic users just say on their own instance or comm. (like goat, pugjeasus and with recent db0 votes the feddit.org admin)
If "going against the hivemind" is insulting people (which is what I've seen most of the time with users with both warnings), then it works as intended.
Also, giving a lot of downvotes is usually a sign of toxicity, and that's only based on the user's actions, not the downvotes they receives.
As I said, it's not a perfect tool. To solve toxic users creating their own communities where they reign alone would require admins stepping in. And in the case you mention, when the person is an admin themselves, there isn't a lot you can imagine, no tool would be able to address that.
Emphasis mine. When is it not a sign of toxicity? Rules are defined by their exceptions, so I am curious as to how this exception is navigated, if at all?
Essentially someone who posts with high frequency has a capacity to issue more downvotes without compromising this admittedly imperfect tool.
Now I was never really a reddit user, but the problematic karma farming of accounts associated with that place was directly linked to these kinds of tools and metrics, no?
In my experience, it is almost always the case, but I said usually in case someone came up with a very unique situation.
Are you saying that because they would get more upvotes, they could offset the downvotes they receive? Potentially, but this is where the second metric comes in (giving a lot of downvotes), and as we said, the two are almost always present at the same time.
Karma farming is an issue when users can see karma as an absolute value. It's not possible on Piefed, which only shows a percentage of attitude (downvotes given, visible to everyone: https://piefed.zip/u/Blaze ) and reputation (downvotes received, visible only to admins)
Right, though it's a mitigating factor. I guess there's something I don't know about piefed: Lemmy comments all have a default upvote from the user that makes it. But it can be revoked by the user. Does Piefed work the same way? My thought only applies if that's the case.
The upvote you give yourself is there, but IIRC it doesn't count for your score.
While we are talking, this is the kind of users who gets the two warnings: https://piefed.zip/u/grimreaper@sopuli.xyz
That's an interesting example of a user this is designed for/around.
The general system of up/downvotes seems to be doing its job quite as intended: their views appear routinely unpopular and there's a seemingly pretty strong community consensus around that.
It looks like their threads have comments that solidly and clearly refute the garbage manosphere stuff. For some people it's the opportunity to express a refutation of it publicly and directly. The public viewer gets to read those responses too.
So with that example: what do the flags do that the content of their posts don't already communicate?
It warns other users that this commenter may be a bad faith user / troll.
Usually when I encounter a troll, I check their profile to see if they are indeed a troll. The warning saves some time on that, and is accurate the vast majority of the time.
I guess I approach it inversely. I encounter what looks like a troll post and I'll only check profiles when either I am interacting with them, or there's such deep downvoting already I'm just doing a morbid dive into someone's history.
Most of the time though the user just has a deeply downvoted argument but otherwise normal and/or low engagement posts, so they wouldn't be flagged by this.
So I understand that it can save some time with some niche cases.
But I can't help but note that the system seems intentionally blind to targeted harassment, which can be a source, if not cause, of bad faith accounts. (And likely those need different approaches since those are also niche cases themselves.)
And maybe it's all just because of my instance's Local feed, so that's what I see as a prominent problem on Lemmy.
If you mean using puppet accounts to massively downvote someone, that's also tracked, but with another tool
Not necessarily puppet accounts, just brigading in general.
It's the rationale many instances used to defederate hexbear. (Even though iirc hexbear disables downvotes, so they're defederated for users mass posting, usually that hogshit image, instead of mass voting.) It wasn't puppets or bot accounts at any rate.
But then there's repost communities where users share comments (especially in places they or their audience is banned from) or DMs for a group response.
Not to mention the whole 'block and downvote all .ml on sight' mentality. But hopefully that might be something this tool could catch.
There has been many times on lemmy and reddit where that is not the case, just saying what people didn't like was enough. From games to politics people love to dogpile. Making a system that helps do that is asinine.
Blaze you do so much for the fediverse but defending this type of system is very disappointing to me.
I said it above, but I'll rephrase:
The point you are making with people going against the hivemind is related to people receiving a lot of downvotes, but doesn't explain people giving a lot of downvotes.
I indeed do a lot, and I've seen toxic users going rampant at a few moments. The lemm.ee shutdown due to trolling and toxicity is a sign that we needed a way to identify bad faith trolls and toxic users better to avoid mods and admins burnout.
Because it's treated differently in piefed but still an example of how the software is designed to punish those who do not act the way the creator wants.
It just doesn't seem like a way to actually address bad faith trolls or bad actors just make it easier to purge. Especially with instances that love to keep those types around, see world and shit just works.
Then Piefed is fine?
Instances who tolerate bad faith trolls or bad actors are going to do so with or without tools such as Piefed's.
If the part after the but is ignored sure. But that part is also the issue so 🤷.
The point is the tools of piefed will amply the bad actors by allowing them to do the worst parts of reddit in the fediverse.
Piefed system doesn't punish those who do not act "the way the creator wants".
Downvotes given are only actions from the user, no interaction from the Piefed dev.
Downvotes received is feedback from other users, no interaction from the Piefed dev either.
Trolls are already around, as you pointed out in another comment. I would rather have a tool that works 80% of the time to detect trolls than no tools at all.
When you ignore all the downsides and concerns everything looks amazing.
I wish I had your confidence in it being positive
While we are talking, example of a user with the two warnings: https://piefed.zip/u/grimreaper@sopuli.xyz
And here's an example of a bigger troll who it surprise surprise doesn't get flagged https://feddit.online/u/FiniteBanjo
Would discard a tool that identifies 90% of trolls just because it doesn't reach 100% accuracy?
Again it's designed to empower downvoting to silence those against the hivemind
Jesus Christ I hate that the internet is turning this space into your shitty fucking idea of a dinner party
It's negative! Oh no better hide that, because some jerks decided being polite is the ultimate Maxim of human expression
Yeah I disagree obvs
as I understand it does not hide negatively voted comments. these are stats, for to moderators, for helping moderation decisions. It's not automatic.
It's the concept that it is good to moderate these spaces like that that bothers. As a human I need to be challenged and that includes dealing with perceptibly negative commentary from people. Not just some whitewashed version of some propagandized online personas masquerading as the the "best" of human beings.
Like IRL, any truly gratifying social function includes the possibility of heated debate and some real feelings exchanged, real things happening outside your comfort zone, not politeness theater that reassures us we are the betters in this society. And that's all to common thinking nowadays, that we are agreeable and therfore the best thing you can be, like thats what polite type dicks/assholes are honestly. And there's a reason you turn to online spaces to validate yourselves. Because people dont actually like you enough IRL. And you want to get social stuff done here. Likely to just exchange prefab thinking which is OK. But they want to moderate Piefed to keep it 'whitewashed' and that's insulting to human intelligence and experience IMHO
Its not your dinner party just because its your server. And if that's why you made it. Then I think that's petty, self-masturbatory and generally uncool shit instead the awesome federated space filled with reasonably unfiltered ideas that it was supposed to have been/could have been.
Semi moderated spaces. Unless its really bad don't worry about it type deal. Learn to ignore, filter and move on. Just like real life. Ive reported like 3 posts total and I've had death threats levied and some insane people saying some intentionally horrible shit. OK, oh well, learned something from it, got stronger, moved forward a better more capable person. Part of life. Its not going away because you removed it from the forum. I feel like unless its really bad. It should be witnessed. Someone got hurt by that? How much? Really? Or is that just playing into some newfound posturing contest? Because that creates a new power structure, to be hurt tactically to invalidate or validate the discussion accordingly and its abused. Overprotection comes with serious downsides, it feels like people here dont understand this concept. You will NEVER be able to handle it by hiding away.
So I appreciate the clarity but I still don't approve of the sentiment and frankly neither should you. It alienates like 80 percent of the world and all the contributions negative and inflammatory people can make (which is plenty, truly)
Ive needed people to hammer into me, call me on my bullshit, and not elate just cause its perceptually harmful to my wellbeing. That's the point. It hurt. I have to adjust or accept being a plaything for those that will do that for whatever reason. And that's no way to conduct yourself. And many others will need that to grow and overcome things (trauma bullshit, groupthink bs, propaganda bs et al.)
I understand wanting to make safe space for people to be in but GYATT DAMN were past the point of that being good when you start talking about making some voices (negative ones, less visible by DESIGN)
People need to be able to make social mistakes and/or be assholes and get called on it and to leave it up as an example not delete it and def not hide it away. Also its helpful if people can learn to see things like that and toughen up a bit so that the world doesn't hurt us as much. Negative people are part of the world and have plenty to say btw. I LOVE to see those kinds of comments so this is bullshit from that POV. You can jerk off each other as much as you want but thats still gonna be true.
Guess its time to plan out a proper server and compete at that level. Cause this circlejerking shit is just a bit too much like Reddit. And I have the technical skill just don't want to have to put in that level of effort I guess.
Sort of sorry for the essay here. Sort of not. Obviously felt it was necessary. Not all positivity is good positivity. And I think negative people and down voters should be equal on their own merits (tho with moderating decisions it might be considered it should be comment and context aware not to label them as a "bad person" so your not allowed here type groupthinking) Each comment moderated equally on its merits. Always and forever. (unless specifically necessary due to some incredibly remarkable circumstance and even then be SUPER careful
yes but these stats highlight those that are only participating or creating heated debates. users that are consistently downvoted, but also users who are giving lots of downvotes