Cool. Cool cool cool.

It's an influence game like anything else online now that the Internet is commoditized. Corporations and political influence campaigns can and do pay for control of high-traffic accounts and communities to nudge discussions to benefit whatever they're selling.

I've never encountered that myself. What communities are you commenting in that you're getting banned elsewhere for it?

On a dog.

Honestly it's a problem with binary ranking systems across the board. Maybe if there were additional axes you could vote on, like "agree/disagree", "quality/low effort", "nuanced/trite", etc. I don't know how one would go about implementing such a thing, but until someone does, we're stuck with having a simplistic system that doesn't adequately reflect the complicated responses real people have to content.

Yup.

I spent over a decade on reddit, and I learned that whenever someone did stuff like that, it was because I had struck a chord. And they usually got bored of their harassment pretty quickly when I ignored them.

Give him some slack, he's young. At least I assume so.

A) There is no hive mind. That's just you perceiving a bunch of people who happen to hold a similar opinion as a monolith, and that's an illusion. You have no data whatsoever to support the idea that they're thinking in concert or even have the same reasons for their reactions.

2. Don't take it so personally. They don't know you, and they're not attacking you by downvoting you. They're simply expressing "I want to see less of this."

d) Instead of having a kneejerk reaction when you get this kind of response and immediately being defensive, step back and use it as a reflective moment. Maybe you misjudged the room, misinterpreted the potential impact of what you posted, or are simply on a different track from those who downvoted. What can you learn from it? Do you need to change your own approach, or do you need to reevaluate your audience?

Part of me wonders if it's an attempt to tank the SEO, so people can't search for or news or easily talk about the site anymore - because it's been nothing but bad.

Read a sidebar before posting in a community please. This is not for your support questions.

I would advocate for the return of intermissions! Theater chains would love it, because it would mean more concessions.