Preface: Love this instance, happy to be here and this isnt a complaint just an observation.
OK so I mod a few communities across several instances, big and small. 3 on this very instance, I have noticed a pattern that posts on this instance tend to get a consistent early downvote count.
This might be my bad observations or the type of posts I see so I’d love to hear if anyone else has noticed the same.
I think early downvoters are just trying to induce others to follow them because they’re assholes and have nothing better to do. Unfortunately, it’s pretty common with both Reddit and Lemmy.
It seems to be more prevalent on lemmy - if the post or comment gets 3 or 4 downvotes before it even gains traction, then it’s dogpiled.
You can see it irl yourself. Post the same comment in a different thread (within the same post!), and watch the difference.
I’ve noticed this with the two largest Lemmy instances – .ml and .world.
I don’t mod any communities but I do put in the effort to curate my “All” feed and most of the users & communities I block come from those 2 instances. Toss hexbear on there and that’s almost 100%.
The .world is tricky bc it is such a large instance and that’s where many new lemmings land so it’s always going to be messy.
I still have my world account but never use it. I prefer being part of db0.
🖤
I specifically avoid all three of them as well, along with Beehaw.
I normally use my .world login, and there are 2 instances specifically on my regular scroll (all, active) that are at 0 or less mere minutes in…
That’s weird. Someone else here in the comments section mentioned downvote bots, so it might be that (?)