What can we do to prevent this? There aren’t that many of us, and posts being hidden can really hinder our discussions.
I don’t think the two posts you showed are proof we’re being brigaded, the bottom one especially is a very contreversial post to make anywhere.
Check the bottom post comments and see for yourself how many are self proclaimed non vegans. That post was not a discussion among peers who want justice for the animals. Just check the same type of discussions on other vegan forums, the arguments vegans make against feeding animals a meat diet is very different to what was presented in that topic.
It shouldn’t matter how controversial a post is among our community, we are here for the same reason and should strive to push the animal movement forward.
that post was pure garbage, dont get animals if you want to starve them to death
No one should “get animals” ever. We’re fucking vegans. Owning animals for the purpose of companionship is exploitation.
But that doesn’t change the fact that there exist animals that need to be taken care of. And there’s no point in doing that if we have to murder other animals to do it.
What do you mean posts being hidden? That second topic seemed to be heavily disliked. It wasn’t just downvotes, the comments make it clear people strongly disagreed with the topic bordering animal abuse.
Posts being hidden from subscribers to this community. For instance, I didn’t see them until I came specifically to see what’s been posted here.
It wasn’t hidden at all for me, and i’m not a subscriber. It may be specific to your instance
Coming at this question as a member of Lemmy-at-large, and neither a vegan nor a member of your community:
(1). As your community gets larger and more active, more people will choose to block your community rather than downvote everything from it. Also, with more members their downvotes will matter less.
(2). Move your community to a different instance that is more favorable towards Veganism, such as Slrpnk or Hexbear, or self-host. Some of these instances even turn off downvotes.
I’m not certain about mods, but at least admins can see where votes are coming from, so they would have the ability to verify whether these are indeed federated vote brigadings.
Have they changed the code? Lemmy/Kbin doesn’t have downvotes. The reduce (down arrow) is only supposed to help users filter content by “show me less of this content” type button. Like a step before blocking a community, but on a user level.
Also, anyone should be able to see who boosts, reduces, or favorites a thread. It’s listed under “activity” on the post itself.
Unfortunately I can’t see if the user who’s interacted with a post is subbed to a community, otherwise I’d investigate a bit further.