After reading this post here I took a deep dive into the database and ran a few queries to see if I could use it to detect some basic manipulation such as brigading or other types of persistent hostile behavior.
I'd describe this as people who could have blocked a certain community but instead seemingly dedicate themselves to continuously downvote posts, maybe because they don't like furry stuff in general.
Each line in the image corresponds to one person and how many times they have downvoted posts in a given community.
I won't take any actions right now, this is all very experimental. I just wanted to share this with y'all to let you know that we admins have tools to give us clues about whether some sort of brigading is going on.
Interesting stuff. Personally, I'd urge people who don't like furry stuff to just block a community and carry on. There's nothing to be gained by obsessing yourself with stuff you don't like.
I've been thinking about this most of the day. This represents, like you said, people with nothing better to do, grouped by how much the user dislikes a community.
You could take action targeting these users. BUT, what about sneakier brigading. For sure there will be users with even MORE nothing better to do.
For example, if they have multiple accounts spread across multiple servers and automate downvoting?
Maybe, a super simple solution is to rate limit downvotes? I mean it's not elegant, but if it were slow enough, it prevents burying things.