this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2025
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Dog-piling is when someone expresses an opinion and people swarm in the comments telling the OC how wrong they are and how right they are. Typically the person getting dogpiled is downvoted into oblivion in the process. Note that I'm not talking about anything controversial in their opinion or the comment being trolling in any way; just any general disagreement with the groupthink.

Brief example:

User 1:  There are lots of factors at play here, not just money.  There's X, Y, Z, and those are all independent from money.
  |____> User 2: No, it's money.  It's always money
  |______>  User 4: Right?  How can anyone think it's anything *but* money?  Some people!
  |____> User 3: Yes, well, X, Y, and Z wouldn't be a problem if not for capitalism, so it's definitely money, and you're wrong.
  |____> User 5: It all boils down to money; always does.
  |____> User 6: Of course it's money.  Only a capitalist bootlicker would think otherwise.
  |____> User 7: Go back to Reddit, troll.
  |____> User 8: You're so close, but it's money.  
  ...
  |____> User 999: (Same as the last 998 comments; contributes nothing except attacking the opinion for being different)

None of that adds anything to the discussion; they're not engaging on the subject, just attacking the opinion because it differs.

That behavior does not seem healthy to me and seems like it's almost designed to discourage anyone from expressing any opinion that's not part of the established group think. Again, I am not talking about trolls here, just any kind of differing opinions.

Should that kind of behavior be discouraged? If so, as a mod, what would be the best way to address it? After the 2nd or 3rd dogpile comment, start removing subsequent ones that are just piling on?

It's definitely a people problem, so I'm curious what would be a gentle but firm way to deal with it.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

None of that adds anything to the discussion; they’re not engaging on the subject, just attacking the opinion because it differs.

Responding when someone disagrees is literally how discussion works. The fact that there a large number of potential participants means there is a chance for a large number of responses, even if some are similar or even identical.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Responding when someone disagrees is literally how discussion works.

Yeah, that's what I'm getting at (though apparently poorly lol).

Disagreements are quite often healthy. It's the piling-on from the peanut gallery without adding any new information or perspective that I'm spotlighting here.

So, imagine 30 replies to your comment here amounting to absolutely nothing but "you're wrong and I'm right!" and nothing else. Is that a discussion? I would say no, it's not.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

I don't have to imagine!

So there are opposing camps that all want to avoid shitty behavior but work against each other, and some of the camps overlap. This is because some content gets negative responses when it doesn't deserve it and soe does. This leads to some of the following responses and even moderation.

Don't just downvote, respond with why!

Not everyone needs to reply, just downvote and move on!

Don't downvote content you dislike, block and move on!

All of these are well intended in their own context, but also tend to be promoted as absolutes without nuance. The whole concept of group think is just a representation of what the majority of people happen to share opinions on. It isn't coordinated or intentional, just a statistical representation of who clicks reply and/or the vote buttons.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

Why would downvotes need to be discouraged?

It honestly doesn't matter if someone downvotes you even if you're 100% factually correct and they are absolutely wrong. This is the internet and up/downvotes are made up cool points.

People are going to troll, disagree, create alts to downvote, or do any number of other things that might make people sad or angry. Just ignore them. Investing thought into it will just cause your own grief and them to feel good about their actions. If someone is being pissy and you don't like their comments just block them. We don't really need anything more than that.

If someone just doesn't want to see downvotes because it makes them sad, then they can join a server that doesn't have downvotes. That solves their problem while still letting the people who don't care about getting downvotes use their downvotes to show disagreement.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

The downvotes are an example of behaviour typically associated with dogpiling. Focus on the unreasonably large amount of replies adding practically no information each.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

You should probably be made aware the the person you're replying to here is, in another thread, currently proudly admitting that they abuse the downvote function for reasons as petty as "this news article is about news I don't like" or "I don't like the OP", and believes this is a justifiable use of downvotes.

So I'd say their take on voting is best disregarded.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

In that case maybe just add a "mute replies for this comment" button if someone doesn't like that lots of people dislike their comment and choose to voice their disagreement.

Why post to the internet if you don't want replies? Sometimes you'll get a bunch of upvotes and people agreeing with you. Some other times (for me i've found this one to be very, very few times) you'll get a bunch of downvotes and people telling you how wrong you are and how right they are.

Just like life you have to take the bad with the good. No one has 100% perfect beliefs that everyone agrees with.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

The "mute replies" button would be great, indeed. It would solve one of the issues with dogpiling. But other two remain:

  1. it discourages the participation of new users - because those are seeing the dogpile in full force, and they know they'll be dogpiled once they say something the local hivemind disagrees with
  2. it adds unnecessary noise to discussions - because it's a bunch of people saying the same shit over and over

Neither thing is welcome when you think about community growth.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Not being able to downvote or reply is discouraging engagement and creating an environment that only allows toxic positivity.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (7 children)

Not being able to downvote

As said in the very comment that you're replying to, and as OP confirms, the downvotes are not the relevant part here.

You are not contributing to the discussion by insistently hammering on a marginal point, across multiple comments.

Not being able to downvote or reply is discouraging engagement

In some cases you do need to remove some forms of engagement, because they go against the goal of creating an active and vibrant community where users can discuss a certain topic. Engagement is the metric, not the goal.

And in the specific case of dogpiling, it's rather clear that it's the sort of engagement that goes against that goal.

The question here is how.

creating an environment that only allows toxic positivity.

"Toxic" is a weasel word that means nothing and everything at the same time; ask 1000 people what it is, and all 1000 will give you different answers. If you must use it, define what you mean by it, as I'm not going to assume.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Downvotes aren't discouraged - just noting that as it's part of the pattern. I should probably just remove that from the post since it's not really relevant.

It's possible, but not practical, to mod based on votes unless it's blatant/explicit vote manipulation. e.g. "Wow, 10 people signed up for accounts just now just to downvote this person.". I have seen that happen lol.

It's the piling-on that I'm asking if/how to address.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I would say put a mute all replies button. That would make it so they aren't bombarded by 1000 comments saying the same thing but still allow people to voice their opinions.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

That'd be great if it existed, but AFAIK, nothing like that is available in the Lemmy API.

But I'm looking at this from a "fostering a healthy community" point of view. Someone comments that they prefer rainy days. Is it fair or constructive to the community to have 50 people to rip that person to shreds because those 50 people prefer sunny days?

I feel there's a line somewhere; I'm just trying to identify it and figure out what to do when it's crossed.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 weeks ago (12 children)

Given that there's no karma here, dogpiling doesn't matter much. Can mute replies and move on.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

If someone stands in front of a crowd and yells an opinion, I don't think they should get angry when they get a bunch of replies instead of having the crowd elect a spokesperson who then gives a committee-decided solo reply.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Obviously the crowd wouldn't elect anyone, they just have to accept what the first person to respond says!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (7 children)

What you are talking about is a normal internet conversation.

If you don't want everyone showing up to call you dumb then don't say stupid things lol

There's a clear difference between people being mean to someone who didn't know better vs someone who is full of shit

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago

As a commenter, I find the dogpiling notifications are the most intrusive part of such a situation. When a situation like this occurs to me I usually quickly disable notifications on the comment in question and move on with my life and it really makes it much more tolerable. I may go back to check on that comment manually from time to time to see if anyone has managed to come up to anything new worth replying to, but typically after a day or two that seems to become pretty unlikely. The comments themselves don't bother me much, even if they are repetitive. I don't mind that people feel the need to have their own personal voice heard on a particular topic but I don't personally need to keep having it hammered into my brain every 10 minutes with a new notification either, I think it's the notifications that turn it into badgering.

I think a lot of the toxicity might be addressed by allowing users to set a limit (with a reasonable default, even) of the number of times they'll be notified about responses to an individual comment. Ideally you would also be able to enable/disable this on a per-comment basis, maybe you do want to be notified of every response to a particular comment because you're basically polling people for their opinions, and of course you would want to keep the existing functionality to disable all notifications related to a particular comment because like I said I use that all the time. But maybe we could limit it to a default like "up to 10", and then disable notifications, because after 10 replies, you probably aren't getting much new information. It would make the storm of replies when something gets particularly controversial or viral or popular a lot more manageable.

Of course if you get into a reply back-and-forth with someone, and you're arguing with a bunch of different people at once, that's not dogpiling that's on you.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

When a topic gets too heated we have the ability to lock a post, it would also be useful to lock a comment for more granular control.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Yeah, locking a thread would be ideal. Am definitely known to lock a post when things get out of hand, but having the granularity to only lock down the too-spicy / non-productive thread would be way better and more fair to everyone else who's not being an asshat.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Does dogpiling happen on Lemmy? I'm a refugee.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago

Sometimes, but much less compared to Reddit.

Welcome here, here are a few pointers for you

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

I got this for saying I downvote copypasta. The whole thing was ridiculous, of course I doubled down.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

A few potential ways to address this:

  1. a rule against dogpiling
  2. a rule against replying without adding new information
  3. harsher enforcement of rules when you notice someone being dogpiled

I'd probably pick #3 but all of them are problematic: #1 and #2 can be misused by the mod because they have huge grey areas, #3 creates double standards. ("So you're saying a «go drink bleach» is OK, but «this is dumb» is not???")

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Yeah....that's why I'm throwing the question out there.

I would envision this falling under the "civility" rules in most places, but it would also be worthy of a dedicated rule. And yeah, reducing the potential for abuse is something to consider.

Basically, I see this happening a lot and am starting to feel like it's creating a hostile environment that will never attract any new users (i.e. it's bad for the Fediverse as a whole). I feel like this kind of behavior is just outside of the "respectful disagreement" that's expected in most places, but I'm unsure what the best way to deal with it is (or if it even should be something to deal with).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I've noticed the start of the dog pile is typically not the issue. Often it starts by accident; like two users coincidentally replying the same thing to a third one, seconds apart, because they didn't see each other's reply. I feel like most people would immediately see it and say "nah, coincidence".

The issue is how it keeps going on and on and on. So perhaps this could be addressed by avoiding the pile to grow, instead of just avoiding it from beginning? Basically, different rules for early and late replies.

I'm just throwing ideas in, mind you.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking. After the 3rd or 4th near-identical "you're wrong, but I'm providing no new information on the subject" reply, maybe start removing them. The point is to avoid a dogpile/echo chamber forming, so nuking it from the first comment definitely wouldn't be the way to go (or even really fair).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

You can't create rules against dog-piling when its being implicitly encouraged by strongly editorial moderation which cultivates a community which is reactionary to minority opinions.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

Dogpiling affects even views that are orthogonal to what the mods would enforce. So it's a more of a general problem.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago

Personally, I think this is where downvoting is a thing. Let's be honest, us mods are demonized here for "over-modding", I think this counts as one of those things where unless a comment breaks an established rule, then there's no real rule breaking. Dog piling isn't great and it doesn't add anything, but it doesn't necessarily mean that a mod needs to jump in and put a stop to it. Personally, I'd just wait until someone reports something to me that is rule breaking, otherwise any of those users can leave the thread if they don't like it, or downvote. That's my opinion though.

Maybe what another commenter said, "harsher enforcement of the rules when you notice someone being dogpiled". Not a new rule directly, but that could be something (worded better than me) "Dogpiling is not banned, but will be watched diligently for rule-breaking". No new rules or anything, but the second someone steps out of line you lock the thread or give them a temporary ban for breaking a rule. Similar to speeding in a construction zone.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Completely agree with your take here and now I feel even worse for sniping at your sort-of-Unpopular Opinion the other day!

Very amusing (and perceptive) example, BTW. It's exactly like that.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

Maybe adding a "no dogpiling" rule could be worth it.

I don't see it happening too much in communities I mod, but those aren't really controversial communities.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I think the thing it ‘adds’ is some kind of indication of social consensus. I agree it’s harmful to thoughtfulness and to people’s development of individual understanding rather than just parroting (see all of twitter). I do think the semi-anonymous forum style prevents a bit of the soap boxing compared to social media with your name on it, but it’s still clearly present here.

In terms of solutions I don’t have a lot of concrete ideas. I think this phenomenon stems from a broader social shift towards moral absolutism and outsourcing knowledge to experts (where who is trusted as an expert varies dramatically) rather than striving to understand things yourself.

Opinions that go against the grain require patience and suspension of disbelief with your conversation partner—something usually lacking in online discussion. A presumption of good faith (even where no good faith was intended) would go a long way.

Anecdotally in a formal learning setting when you take a student’s ideas seriously (even if they’re not very mature ideas) they learn to think through things better and consider them more deeply than when you just correct them with the most up to date spiel on the matter.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Being an instance with downvotes disabled sorta helps for this imo

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Can you explain how? Removing downvotes removes a signal, which I would think leads to an increase in the other two signals, upvoting and commenting. Since dog-piling is excessive commenting I feel like it would make the problem worse.

It I can't downvote someone I'm more likely to comment my opinion, even if that opinion is dog-piling.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

People that dogpile downvote too, it’s not exclusionary. Downvotes on Reddit were not meant to be a „disagree” button - it was intended for off-topic and rule breaking content. Of course platform has very little control over that and people started it to bury opinions they disagreed with below visibility thresholds.

Out of all the ways to solve this I really like what Tildes does. There’s no downvote button and only somewhat trusted users get to assign labels that work a bit similarly but force you to provide a reason for that downvote. For example, a pun that doesn’t bring anything to discussion can be labelled as „noise” which doesn’t remove or hide it but brings it to bottom. Other labels serve as quasi-report. It’s a solved problem but I think most people like dogpiling and downvoting.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

FWIW Dog-piling also applies to upvotes. People see a headline or comment they agree with, even if it's a complete fabrication, and upvote it.

Of course as you noted not everyone agrees what an upvote or downvote represents.

As for Tildes, it does help but also requires a lot more moderation. Not that I'd be against trying it, I do just wonder how well it scales up, especially if people disagree.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I mean, considering that for literally years, dog-piling was both engaged in and practically encouraged by moderation, it would seem like a step in the right direction.

The solution is to stop using moderation as a cudgel to create echo chambers. Specifically, c/World, c/Politics, and c/Political_Memes were explicitly filtered to a specific view of American politics by moderation over the course of 2023-2024. Squid was particularly notable for regularly flaming people to then ban them.

Moderation needs to be held to a real standard, but has continued to be used in an incredibly editorial fashion.

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