Yeah, that's what I do as well. Seems much nicer than hurting their community by just randomly downvoting everything I don't want to see.
No, sometimes it is about blocking.
If you run a small community like several of us do, even a small amount of downvotes can completely shut down a discussion from ever being seen by anyone else. It's a way petty assholes have of trying to kill conversation in small communities because they don't like something about what you said or how you said it.
If someone neither wants to contribute nor lurk, and merely drag down a community, they shouldn't be allowed to continue to be a part of it at all.
I'd also like to know as I'm in the same boat you are. I'm just leaving this comment to remember to look later and see if you got an answer.
I dunno about it happening just as much on the right. I'm in Alberta and (for events only) still have to use Facebook, so I unfortunately see a lot of right-wing content. The overwhelming majority complain about left-wingers in broad sweeps, not people slightly less right-wing than them. The right wing is far more cohesive in my experience, which is one of the things that make them more dangerous. Their votes primarily mean "fuck the other side" in a way that left-wing votes do not.
Most of the insular leftist communities here on Lemmy also claim the moral high ground, but will ban light dissent. From FuckCars, 196, lemmy.ml, to some Vegan communities they all feel that they have the moral high ground and will spew bile at anyone with the audacity to agree with them, but in the wrong way. Their votes often mean "fuck EVERY other side except my small sliver of the left."
On the quiz, I got 84% NDP as my highest, followed by Green.
I personally can't stand purity testing and I see it frequently on Lemmy, and it nearly drove me from the platform when I first joined. One of the first threads I saw was (with no exaggeration) the single most insane purity test ask I'd ever seen up until that point. The thread consisted of "Come in here, tell me I'm right in exceptionally glowing terms, and tell me I will always be right. I will block and ban anyone from the instance if they write anything else or I get the feeling they are being sarcastic or not effusive enough in their praise."
I feel it is exceedingly harmful and drowns out better ideas while driving off potential allies.
I feel it happens more frequently online and in left-leaning spaces.
Albuquerque - Weird Al Yankovic
... Oh, it's treated wood? Never mind. RIP.
But you can come serve in Canada and help us if you like!
I run a managed service provider (basically corporate I.T.) and we deal with lots of medical & dental companies. We have yet to walk into a place EVEN IF THEY HAD OTHER I.T. SUPPORT BEFORE WE GET THERE that isn't actively bleeding mass amounts of data to China and have no idea why they are doing so. Some systems are even going as far as to send out screenshots and passwords.
We don't know why it's so prevalent in medical and dental, but it's probably not good.
It's kind of terrifying how non-private everything is in badly run companies that are more cost-focused than privacy-focused. Even worse, we've had some medical and dental offices refuse support because it was too costly (and we're on the lower-mid end of pricing), but having all their client data stolen was free!
Err... Not to throw a wrench into things but, yeah. They kinda sorta did.
I've gone to my community and to specific posts, but can't work out how to show downvotes. Can you shed a little light on how to see them please?