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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.
Yes and no.
There are accounts who genuinely do go around downvoting en masse without any contributions. When I was growing my community, I caught about 5 accounts - some with no post history, and no contribution history on my community doing it. They also had a long mod log history of bans for doing it elsewhere.
So I banned them because they kept burying new posts. That is my right.