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.
If you don’t like a community’s content, ignore/block it. Why are you downvoting a bunch of stuff?
because downvoting is one of the central actions pivotal to the kind of social media that Lemmy/piefed/reddit is.
Yeah, that’s great for flagging spam or stuff that’s not relevant to the community it’s posted in. Downvoting content that’s good for a community just because you don’t like the community is like the godbotherers that yell at people about sin during pride celebrations. Don’t be like them.
Downvoting a toxic community is also a valid use of your downvote. Reddit has several examples (gamersriseup, the_donald, fatpeoplehate, among many more examples).
Think of it like concerned citizens yelling at the westboro baptist church for being hateful pieces of shit.
An analogy can really color an argument eh? I don’t usually engage in that kind of rhetoric, I find it undermines the conversation by overtly engaging with peoples emotions.