Hey all,
In light of recent events concerning one of our communities (/c/vegan), we (as a team) have spent the last week working on how to address better some concerns that had arisen between the moderators of that community and the site admin team. We always strive to find a balance between the free expression of communities hosted here and protecting users from potentially harmful content.
We as a team try to stick to a general rule of respect and consideration for the physical and mental well-being of our users when drafting new rules and revising existing ones. Furthermore, we’ve done our best to try to codify these core beliefs into the additions to the ToS and a new by-laws section.
ToS Additions
That being said, we will be adding a new section to our “terms of service” concerning misinformation. While we do try to be as exact as reasonably able, we also understand that rules can be up to interpretation as well. This is a living document, and users are free to respectfully disagree. We as site admins will do our best to consider the recommendations of all users regarding potentially revising any rules.
Regarding misinformation, we’ve tried our best to capture these main ideas, which we believe are very reasonable:
- Users are encouraged to post information they believe is true and helpful.
- We recommend users conduct thorough research using reputable scientific sources.
- When in doubt, a policy of “Do No Harm”, based on the Hippocratic Oath, is a good compass on what is okay to post.
- Health-related information should ideally be from peer-reviewed, reproducible scientific studies.
- Single studies may be valid, but often provide inadequate sample sizes for health-related advice.
- Non-peer-reviewed studies by individuals are not considered safe for health matters.
We reserve the right to remove information that could cause imminent physical harm to any living being. This includes topics like conversion therapy, unhealthy diets, and dangerous medical procedures. Information that could result in imminent physical harm to property or other living beings may also be removed.
We know some folks who are free speech absolutists may disagree with this stance, but we need to look out for both the individuals who use this site and for the site itself.
By-laws Addition
We’ve also added a new by-laws section as well as a result of this incident. This new section is to better codify the course of action that should be taken by site and community moderators when resolving conflict on the site, and also how to deal with dormant communities.
This new section provides also provides a course of action for resolving conflict with site admin staff, should it arise. We want both the users and moderators here to feel like they have a voice that is heard, and essentially a contact point that they can feel safe going to, to “talk to the manager” type situation, more or less a new Lemmy.World HR department that we’ve created as a result of what has happened over the last week.
Please feel free to raise any questions in this thread. We encourage everyone to please take the time to read over these new additions detailing YOUR rights and how we hope to better protect everyone here.
https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/#80-misinformation
https://legal.lemmy.world/bylaws/
Sincerely,
FHF / LemmyWorld Operations Team
EDIT:
We will be releasing a separate post regarding the moderation incident in the next 24-48 hours, just getting final approval from the team.
Any chance the relevant incident could be unpacked and used as a demonstration of how these changes would alter the outcome or encourage a different outcome?
As someone who only saw pieces of it after the fact, I am potentially in the dark here about the purposes and context of these changes.
That being said, from what I did see, it seemed very much like an instance admin imposing themselves and their superior power on a community when there were probably plenty of other more subtle action that could have been taken, where subtlety becomes vital for any issue complex and nuanced enough to be handled remotely well. I’m not sure I’m seeing any awareness of this in this post and the links provided.
For instance, AFAICT, the “incident” involved a discussion of if or how a domestic cat could eat a vegan diet. Obviously that’s not trivial as they, like humans, have some necessary nutrients, and AFAICT the vegans involved were talking about how it could be done, while the admin involved was basically having none of that and removed content on the basis that it would lead to a cat dying.
And then in the misinformation link we have:
In the context of cats and their food … which “living beings” are being harmed and who is encouraging or discouraging this harm?
Whether you’re vegan or not, this seems to me formally ambiguous and on the face of it only enshrines the source of the conflict rather than facilitating better forms of communication or resolution (perhaps there are things in the by-laws I’ve missed??).
Two groups can have exactly the same aim and core values (reduce harm to living beings) but in the complexity of the issue come to issue a bunch of friendly fire … that’s how complex issues work.
So, back to my original question … how exactly would things be done better?
We will be releasing a separate post involving that incident in the next 24-48 hours, just getting final approval from the team.
Hi there, totally in the dark here. What was the incident?
Vegans saying that cats, which are obligate carnivores, can subsist on a vegan diet; admin removed it as misinformation. The vegan community then threw a fit over it.
Obligatory “I’m not a vegan,” but this comment seems like it’s at least partially mischaracterizing the issue.
Some of the comments removed seem to advocate for a vegan cat diet that specifically includes the amino acids and protein that cats need, albeit sourced in a vegan-friendly way:
I am also not a vet (go figure) but this seems reasonable on its face and lines up with the 5 minutes of Google research that I did. It sounds like not all vegan formulated cat food actually strikes the balance cats need and that this diet would need to be balanced very carefully, but it seems possible to do it in a healthy way, especially if done in concert with a vet and frequent checkups.
I agree with you but wanted to add that non vegan cat food has the same quality and nutritional value issues.
I think some people assume vegan cat food means feeding them whole foods prepared at home but thats ridiculous. It would be just as ridiculous to decide to start formulating your own cats nutritional needs with non vegan food.
Preparing your own animal food is its own subject entirely, and vegan and non vegan cat foods share a lot of the same processes and ingredients.
God damn. So that means theres a whole community of people whos cats are living their worst life, because some asshole adopted them and feels self rightous.
And those are the ones who set a bad example for vegans. I’m sure there are mild mannered non-asshole vegans out there. I’d even believe they were a silent majority. But MY interactions with vegans are always the loud pushy types who try to make you feel that YOU need to follow THEIR choices.
And to that type of person, I actually have an endless supply of middle fingers and a chronic drought of fucks to give. I tell them I’m going to eat THREE cheeseburgers now. One for the cheeseburger I was already going to eat. One for the cheeseburger they’re NOT eating, and one more just to make their veganism a net loss. Since I’d only be eating just the one if they weren’t getting in my face about being vegan.
Right … so talking about whether a vegan cat diet is possible is some form of intrinsically bad animal harming behaviour …
… but needlessly killing and eating cows to put up figurative middle fingers is … all good?
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No vegan would ever accept any degradation in their cats life just to make them vegan.
The only discussions are around maintaining a cats health and happiness while feeding them a vegan diet that contains all the same supplements non vegan food does.
Theres plenty of cats who just dont like the two vegan brands available and so thats that, they aren’t vegan.
Its absurd that you all think that vegans of all people would tolerate hurting an animal or reducing its quality of life in any way.
What do you all think vegan even means?
Yea … they way some get abusive and accusatory against vegans or pro-vegan people around topics like this is really revealing. Strawman arguments, thin presumptions and generally unfriendly behaviour … all to avoid talking/thinking about a moral issue. You can tell that for some it’s a touchy issue that they’re not comfortable with because for so many other things plenty of people are happy to admit that they’re fallible and shitty, like we all are. But somehow this issue seems to get under people’s skin, which to me only indicates that there’s some serious cognitive dissonance going on.
people say stereotypes are damaging but I have literally never met a vegan IRL that was a decent person.
I know plenty.
The thing is, the ones you meet actively, as in, they make being a vegan a significant portion of their exterior presentation and lifestyle, they’re usually off the deep end, independent of being vegan.
You can see the exact same behaviour - just not about veganism - in modern alt right counterculture, religious fascists, etc. It’s always about pushing a narrative and a believe system, the specific system is almost irrelevant.
But OTOH, veganism without making it a religious cult is almost normal at this point, which is also why you would not actively notice it a lot. There’s nothing to actively notice, really.
It’s just the crazy people that make it weird, and then end up torturing dependent animals and stuff.
‘No True Scotsman’…
I think you misunderstand the argumentative fallacy there. Unless you mean that someone who isn’t pushing agenda is no true scotsman? Then that’s correctly used, but also the inverse of what I am saying.
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Aaah, nevermind. I see what you mean, I could have worded that better. It wasn’t meant as exclusionism, rather that of any subgroup, the part that does X, but is self-reflective about it and accepting of disparate opinions is not going to be remotely as visible, and hence by and large, you won’t notice that part actively.
This of how little you notice most catholics in daily life. I doubt you associate “is a catholic” with most people you interact with who are. You would not even think about assigning such a label, no matter which way.
The people you associate with such an attribute are the ones that constantly push this attribute themselves, lacking the ability to reflect how this appears to others and alienates them. And it’s this very mental inability to consider a perspective of others that would also make you, say, feed your cat a vegan diet as a vegan out the inability to reflect that while for humans a vegan diet might be the correct choice (and even then there are exceptions of course) but this does not mean you can extend this to cats, unless the cats as a society decide this of their own. It’s their decision to make.
But it’s also exactly this kind of person where you remember that specific attribute. “Is strictly catholic”, “is vegan and nothing else it seems”, “exists only as an extra to their car”, etc etc.
Ok so I held back my vomit long enough to read your mental diarrhea and I’d like to point out that I’ve never had a catholic walk up to me while I was enjoying a nice burger on the patio seating and have them rail at me for 20 minutes about my sinful and destructive lifestyle.
On the other hand, while not always a burger, I have had this happen from random vegan passerbys three times now in the last year.
So certainly you can claim that I’m ‘only noticing the obnoxious vegans.’ except that neither me or my social circles know of ANY vegans who aren’t obnoxious. In university I often wanted to ask vegans some questions critical to me like ‘What do you plan on doing with the current living animals once you outlaw meat?’, and ‘what about critical medicine research that saves human lives?’ but every fuckdamn time the minute they have me sitting down it becomes a blame fest where I am the evil person for living like humans have for over 200,000 years.
I will say this again: Fuck vegans. Every one. I don’t care if you think there are ‘good’ ones, in 5 decades of living I’ve never met a single one. Arrogant sanctimonious assholes on a crusade against human nature. Every pet and infant that dies from being forced a vegan diet is blood on all of your hands.
blah blah fuck vegans
Yikes
How to not be taken serious by people - Vegan cat abusers edition
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Who decides what is malicious?
I occasionally go hunting and fishing. Is giving advice on either malicious? It definitely can lead to harm of a living being, but I don’t consider it malicious, while others think it’s barbaric and evil.
Not the point I imagine, the rule as written makes no requirement of being able to specifically identify who or how. It’s like Google AI suggesting you add glue to your pizza sauce. Is it likely that you, /u/maegul, would follow that advise? Hopefully not. But is it absolutely endandering to leave the information there and not just flat out delete it on the off-chance someone takes it serious? Of course!
Fun fact! Glue is put into the cheese on pizza slices for promotional purposes. It’s what gets them that nice stringing stretching cheese on video.
Okay so no jokes on the internet anymore then right.
Y’all need to follow your premises through mentally.