exposing the deceit and degenerate behavior of shills -- while more time consuming than brigading them

I did both. I imagine it would be pretty pointless to for the former without following through with the latter. It's been my experience that more often than not, simply exposing shill behavior is not enough to actually stop them. I reported the TrumpNPC faggot for actual, legitimate spam violations, providing ample documentation, but was completely ignored. I never even received a response on the issue. This sent a strong message, setting a precedent for me: if the posted site rules were not going to be enforced by those with admin privileges, then matters had to be taken into the hands of users. Unlike admins though, users have a limited set of tools to work with: making comments and posts exposing the shills and bad actors, and downvoating. So I did both.

Ultimately, it hardens the Voat immune system and makes us all better bullshit eradicators. This is the true glory of Voat, and the terror of disinfo pushers.

I agree 100%. This is my goal in making my posts.

I have seen the first link, but only because it has been linked to me a couple times since the ban. I have no recollection of seeing it in the past, and I have a hard time considering a 2 year old post to be "explicit articulation" when the User Agreement was never updated to reflect this post. A couple years back, I didn't use this site much for several months. I don't know the dates of my absence, but it's very possible that I never saw the post because I was simply not using the site while it was up. I don't know how long it was on the front page, but this most recent stickied post was on the front page for less than 48 hours. That post though, was from 2 years ago... 2 YEARS AGO, and the User Agreement was never updated to reflect the rules changes outlined in the post? Banning users for violating rules that were never included in the user agreement, rules that were only outlined in one post from 2 years ago, and without warning, shows an enormous lack of integrity.

What's more, is that the user (who I will not ping here), who literally lobbied the site admins to get me banned because I wouldn't back down from exposing her as a shill, who can be seen here as the "target" of her own alt account, which was banned for "voat manipulation", HAS NOT BEEN BANNED. This user used both of these accounts to upvoat each other repeatedly and to "downvoat brigade" her accusers. There is some sort of double standard being applied here. This user will be the subject of my next v/ProtectVoat post. At first I didn't think she had much influence on this site, so I didn't think a post about her was necessary, but boy was I was wrong. She is an easily documented liar and subversive shill that successfully lobbied site admins to ban one of the only two users who were actively trying to expose her. She was trying to get both of us banned, but failed, and instead only managed to get me banned. She expresses her disappointment about this here. @Puttitout, I hope you're reading this.

As for the second link in your comment, that is specifically about farming voats from other users... I have never done this, nor would I, because farming voats from other users is gay beta bullshit.

Here's what I did do, full disclosure:
I used multiple accounts, usually two, no more than three, to downvoat shill accounts when they had more CCP than downvoatable comments. Sometimes, I upvoated my own posts and comments, but only for very specific reasons, and never simply to boost my CCP. I've never had a problem earning CCP the hard way. These reasons are as follows:

1. Sometimes I would apply 1 or 2 upvoats to a new post to help give it a little traction, but more importantly, to counteract the inevitable downvoat that virtually all of my new posts would receive within minutes of being submitted. I'm not kidding, it was rare that I could post anything without getting downvoated almost immediately, regardless of content.

2. Sometimes I would upvoat my own comments when calling out shills in order to counteract their downvoats and attempts to bury my exposure of them.

3. It is not possible to dole out more total downvoats than total upvoats. IE: if I had upvoated a total of 506 times with my account, I would not be able to downvoat more than 506 times. To efficiently increase the number of upvoats I'd given with an account, a few times I upvoated a page of my own comments. I didn't want to upvoat other users in this way, because I didn't want to upvoat comments I didn't agree with, and because I wanted to be efficient, I didn't want to have to selectively choose comments. I never did this to boost my CCP, frankly I would've been fine with it lowering my CCP. I had over 25,000 CCP accumulated organically from other users, my CCP was not a concern. I only did this so that I could keep downvoating shill accounts. And, like I said, I only did this to myself a few times, eventually I started upvoating many many pages of comments made by u/derram and u/bitchutearchive, because those are both accounts with which I always agreed. You're welcome bots ;)

Because all of these methods were possible when using a computer and a phone, and because the posted site rules made no mention of anything like this, as far as I could tell it seemed like a method that was condoned by and allowed for on the site. I wasn't farming voats from other users, and I wasn't organizing other users in downvoat brigades, which, for the record, were the only forms of "farming", "brigading", and "voat manipulation" I had ever seen addressed anywhere, in any sort of explanation of the rules (obviously, outside of the User Agreement, which doesn't address any of this in any way). This is why I continue to insist that nothing I did violated the posted rules of the site.

You probably weren't looking for this textwall explanation, but you got it anyway. Sometimes, you just gotta get it out.