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.
EDIT 2 (2024-08-31):
We’ve posted a response, sorry for the delay.
👉 https://lemmy.world/post/19264848 👈
I didn’t consider admins any more qualified in parsing medical journals than mods are. I’ve got letters behind my name and am not supremely confident in that. That said, anything like a pro-ana community should be quickly purged.
I’ve got no idea about the context of the vegan drama though.
Okay, specifically ignoring fediaf language because they’re a vet nutritionist with strong understanding of amino acid profiles and bioavailability I take it (and I’m talking about the trigger happy admin here) https://europeanpetfood.org/pet-food-facts/fact-sheets/nutrition/vegetarian-diets/
Apparently that organization in your link has no issue advising its possible to have a healthy vegan/vegetarian diet. Guess they aren’t afraid people will kill their cats over it.
We’ll be posting a response to that in the next 24-48 hours, just finishing reviewing with the team.
probably could have used a less loaded term than purging in relation to the pro-ana problem. lmao.
I’ve got letters behind my name and am not supremely confident in that.
The more you know about academic research, the less you trust something just because it’s academic research.
Like, even after peer review, it’s not uncommon to find out the peers who first reviewed it missed something or just flat out don’t know what they were reading.
It’s like my stats professor said:
Anyone can produce stats to show what they want, the hard part is getting clean stats and interrupting them without any bias.
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:
We also reserve the right to remove any sufficiently scientifically proven MALICIOUS information posted which a user may follow, which would result in either IMMINENT PHYSICAL harm to an INDIVIDUALS PROPERTY, the PROPERTY of OTHERS or OTHER LIVING BEINGS.
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?
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.
Yeah, they’re 100% in the wrong here. Cats aren’t people, they can’t consent to your personal code of ethics. They’re meat-eaters by nature, and denying them of that is animal abuse. Good intentions don’t override your pet’s nutritional needs. Admins are right to remove any content that encourages animal abuse.
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.
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.
In the context of cats and their food … which “living beings” are being harmed and who is encouraging or discouraging this harm?
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!
Yeah my thoughts exactly. And… “harm to living beings” is really thin ice. One could argue that not being vegan/vegetarian is by default harming living beings. I love my steak and would never abstain, but I’m very much aware that my succulent meal meant that some poor cow had to die.
Thank you all for doing this.
Thanks for banning discussion? Gonna have to explain that one.
You know what would be in the news, if a vegan forced their cat to be vegan until it died.
You know how many stories youll find about that. About 1 and the cat survived.
Now compare that to stories of healthy vegan cats, youll find plenty of those. Usually the stories are written from a skeptic point of view but the stories are there.
Reading through your comments here, I wonder if you’re not better off seeing up your own instance of Lemmy somewhere?
Peer reviewed scientific sources for people talking about health stuff? I can understand modding out “cyanide makes everything taste yummy” but at the other side, this isn’t Wikipedia. It’s a discussion forum and a lot of the topics will be about users’ own experiences and perceptions. If you want to run an academic journal instead, this isn’t the right way to do it.
The parent post also offers no answer at all about what decision was reached regarding the c/vegan intervention and whether such things should be allowed to happen again. Is there any update about that?
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I don’t see anything there about what (if anything) was absorbed from the c/vegan incident. If you’re still working on it, that’s fine, just say so, there’s not a huge rush. The original post instead seems to imply that some kind of decision was reached, but leaves it up to user detective skills to figure out what it is. I’m an outsider to c/vegan, I’m not out for anyone’s blood, but I saw the intervention as a good faith error that should explicitly be called out as one. Any resulting policy change should be designed to prevent similar errors going forward. If you’ve decided something different from that (i.e. that the intervention was valid and that you want to see more of the same), that’s fine, it’s your server, but please tell us in so many words so we can react accordingly.
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The same thing about the academic journals. “Encouraged” is one thing but it would help enormously if you tell us what the admins are going to do if someone posts based on direct observations, personal experience, etc. It’s well established now that the COVID-19 virus is transmitted through the air and that N95 respirators and HEPA air purifiers are hugely valuable preventive measures, but it took a ridiculously long time for health authorities to admit that fact (Science, Nov 2022). Thus in many cases, community awareness about health issues is ahead of the authorities and journals. We should be encouraging that, not trying to shut it down. (See for example r/ZeroCovidCommunity on Reddit).
Anyway, I’ve been under the belief that the instance admins are basically server operators or assisting the server operators, dealing with system maintenance and software problems, or sometimes, serious and obvious policy breaches like threats of violence. They aren’t supposed to be medical experts or pet dieticians, so (following Reddit, since Lemmy positions itself as a Reddit alternative) they should generally defer to community mods about discussions within communities. Community mods, at least, are supposed to have some kind of understanding of the topics under discussion.
If you’re saying that server admins should be able to override community mod decisions about discussions regarding stuff like pet diets, then fine, but again, tell us so we know what kind of environment we’re in.
Just because someone mods a community doesn’t mean they inherently have more understanding of a topic.
Everyone can have an opinion but Google-fu is not real research. Citing random websites that only support your view isn’t either.
If someone doesn’t like the administration of an instance they can find another one they agree with or spin up their own. Don’t complain you don’t like how something was handled just because you didn’t get your way when you don’t contribute anything to the maintenance or upkeep of the service.
Oh man this ones got some flavour to sink ones teeth into 😅
I take the side of the admin. If someone can’t accept or understand that a cat eats a meat based diet then they deserve to have reality thrown in their face. Better than some poor animals being tortured.
Yeah, fully agreed.
And beyond the specific situation - as disgusting as it is to let a dependent animal suffer because of a belief it doesn’t even hold - it also shows a very basic lack of self-reflection ability if, even faced with backlash, one cannot realize why others would be appalled by such opinions.
The idea of Obligate Carnivore is fully lost on some. And that’s quite a sad reality.
Sure, explain it to me. What is it that a cat can’t get from non-meat sources?
“feculate carnivore” returns no results on google. Oblate carnivore returns results for obligate carnivores, looks to be that obligate/oblate is used interchangeably?
I haven’t heard either of these terms as a native English speaker. Perhaps they are regional terms, or terms from another language?
The idea of Obligate Carnivore is fully lost on some. And that’s quite a sad reality.
It seems to me that a lot of people are using that term without knowing what it means. That, too, is a sad reality. It means that cats in the wild aren’t able to live off non-meat sources that they can find there, similar to how humans can’t live in subfreezing temperatures without shelter or clothing. It says nothing about whether their dietary needs can be fulfilled without meat in a domestic environment. Maybe yes, maybe no, but you can’t just parrot the words “obligate carnivore” like a Fox News anchor and act like that gives you the answer. The world is more complicated than that.
In fact, based on other info, cats do seem to be able to survive on human-supplied vegan diets, but it’s less clear that they can enjoy optimal health on such a diet. So the reality seems to be somewhat shaded.
Even for humans, being a well-nourished vegan is somewhat difficult (you have to pay attention to stuff like protein combination). It’s even harder to be a so-called “raw vegan” (living entirely from uncooked vegetables such as in salads) but apparently it can still be done. Most human vegans consume a lot of beans and grains that are inedible without cooking.
You can imagine an animal species for which cooked beans and grains would be a completely healthy diet, and yet that diet is never seen in the wild because wild animals don’t cook. Thus they would get their protein instead from animal sources, i.e. be obligate carnivores, even though they would be fine on steamed rice and tofu. There is no logical incompatibility between “obligate carnivore” and “vegan diet”. It’s a question of biology that is species specific. In the limit, you could inagine a Star Trek replicator synthesizing perfect mouse meat from pure carbon and other elements, giving you a completely healthy and satisfied vegan cat that thinks it is eating freshly killed mice.
It doesn’t appear possible for humans to stay healthy for long periods as fruitarians (some people don’t want to cut or kill living plants for food, but instead live off of fruits and nuts that have naturally fallen off the plants). But that can only be known through experimental observation, not linguistic knee jerks. You have to examine the details to understand the real situation for any particular species, food type, and preparation method
If someone can’t accept or understand that a cat eats a meat based diet then they deserve to have reality thrown in their face. Better than some poor animals being tortured.
Dang, is that what happened? It’s sad to think that there are people mistreating animals that they care about accidentally, through trying to apply their own human morals and rules to them.
Cats are hunters, they eat meat. If that’s an issue for your home then fair enough, your house your rules. Just don’t get a cat, or a carnivorous pet in general. There’s lots of cool pets out there that are herbivores :-)
I think it’s less applying their morals to the cat and more not wanting to support the meat industry. That said, yeah just don’t have a cat. I expect many vegans aren’t too big on the concept of pet ownership anyway.
I don’t think this is the place for this discussion obviously but just know this subject has a lot of taboo and misinformation around it.
I recommend reading Obligate Carnivore: Cats, Dogs, and What it Really Means to be Vegan by Jed Gillen if you are interested in digging deep into it.
I think all of this says more about the faith people have in the quality of their cat food.
Also people seem to love the words obligate carnivore but have not much understanding of the concept.
Oh and lastly, my favorite is discounting all evidence as anecdotal or “not good research”.
This is some of the stupidest dogpiling ive seen and really drives home how simple the average person on here is.
“Hur dur, if people talk about the possibility of a vegan cat then surely their owners will starve them and refuse to change course until they die!”
I’m just going to go ahead and stir this pot since I love cats.
~2003 Vegan roommate rented a room at my warehouse in one of the shittier parts of Oakland. Neat guy, lot’s of esoteric hobbies, bare him no ill will.
Watch vegan roommate mix up grey goo with water and microwave. Ask what is goo?
Goo is vegan cat food for Soni-chan that roommate gets from wise internet-vegans. Goo contains all essential nutrients and vitamins for vegan cat.
I mumbled something about cats being obligate carnivores without really knowing what it means. Vegan roommate clearly loves Soni-chan and Soni-chan loves vegan roommate.
Fast forward 1 month.
I don’t see the cat much, it stays in his room. I tell him he’s free to let it roam around the warehouse. Vegan roommate says he’s worried that the cat will slip outside… this seems sensible, it’s a small warehouse with roll up doors and no real way to keep a cat from escaping.
Fast forward 2 more months.
I come home one day. Hear vegan roommate sobbing loudly in his room.
Wait a few minutes, because privacy. Knock on door.
Soni-chan has become sick and died.
I offer what comfort I can and leave vegan roommate to grieve. Vegan roommate and friend drive to Los Angeles to bury cat in mother’s back yard. I am very sad.
Vegan roommate returns and accuses other roommate of poisoning cat. Says cat was happy and healthy for years living at victorian house in San Francisco. Cat only started to get sick after moving to warehouse.
I asked vegan roommate if vegan cat was inside/outside cat in San Francisco? Vegan roommate says yes!
My conclusion. Vegan’s are fucking morons. Except for that one guy up there in the comments who loves his cat… oh, and all the other vegans who aren’t complete ass douches… now please go away. 
I had no idea what this one was about. I got banned a few months ago for insisting in c/vegan that animals that eat a predominantly carnivorous diet should not be fed a vegan diet. I’m a cat lover and dog liker and believe that it is animal abuse. I’m glad to see this change.
Try reading some current information on it. It can be healthy for a cat to be vegan if it is done correctly.
The most difficult part is quote a lot of cats are picky to the point they won’t eat the one or two brands that are actually nutritionally complete.
Its absurd they are banning even the discussion of this when research keeps trending towards the possibility of a healthy vegan cat.
Mostly, I think its absurd to think these discussions will actually hurt real cats. If the owner is basing their information on this websites shitposters, they are already a horrible owner.
So there is a study that shows that forcing your quest for a sense of absolute moral superiority on a obligate or fecultative carnivore by feeding them an unnatural vegan diet may not kill them?
The issue is choice and the fact that you are taking it away. Obligate and fecultative carnivores would choose to eat a diet consisting mainly of meat because that is what they evolved to eat and you are taking that away from them. These studies that say it may not be unhealthy are simply efforts to feed the self-satisfied circle jerk. Efforts to develop a vegan food that obligate and fecultative carnivores would choose to eat are efforts to overcome their nature which is to eat a diet consisting mainly of meat.
Forcing your beliefs on a being that isn’t given a choice.
Animal abuse.
Try reading some current information on it.
Oh no no no, we don’t play that game here. If you’re trying to convince someone of your argument, the burden of providing reputable and scientifically accurate evidence is on YOU and you only.
And only if the other side won’t accept scientific evidence then you can blame them.
I’m not saying cats can’t be vegan but to the best of my knowledge their diet must be meat based. As it is you who are trying to convince me (and others) cats can be vegan, it is also you who must provide the evidence.
I believe you in saying it’s possible if your cat isn’t a picky eater. However, what do most pet cats eat per day, 100 to 200 calories a day? Pet food is usually made with the cuts that didn’t make it into people food. I understand why people choose to be vegans (I see this choice almost like a religious choice). Making a few cats vegan doesn’t really help the “vegan cause.” Plus, there’s no point in forcing animals in making ethical choices.
I’m honestly not sure if a vegan cat diet is possible or not, but random people giving unqualified advice that could easily lead a less knowledgeable person to harm an animal is a problem. What should have been done in this case is for a mod or admin to shut the discussion down with a note telling people to consult a qualified veterinarian regarding any change to their pets diet.
This is less likely to help the cat than someone also saying the actual diet requirements
i don’t think you can say that for sure. best case you just get into a shouting match where most people will get lost in the weeds of logical fallacies.
My idea was that respectful, dissenting opinions posted in a small ratio should be allowed in all communities.
It works well in this situation because you can have ten vegans posting about how vegan diets are great for cats, but you’d still have at least one guy posting “This isn’t safe for your cat. Please find sources that aren’t biased before doing this.”
I don’t know if a vegan diet is safe for cats or not, and I shouldn’t need to. Having that one dissenting voice is helpful in prompting people not to trust everything they read on the internet. c/flatearth can still have their narrative, but a policy like this would help put the brakes on it a little.
Of course, do consider this policy in a community that you agree with. This would mean that someone would be allowed to post Russian propaganda in the Ukraine community. If they spam it, it can still be removed. If they’re rude, it can be removed. But if it’s just one Russian comment for every ten comments refuting it, I would hope the ten comments are enough to handle it.
Explicitly though, that won’t be what happens, particularly for something as small as the Fediverse. What happens is a post from a small community ends up on the main feed and the prevailing opinion of the entire Fediverse begins a long chain of comments about how dissenting opinions are dumb.
I blocked all those vegan subs when this shit happened, they were already pretty bad tho.
Like if someone posted:
I’m not vegan but am looking to eat less meat
They were banned, so I figured out I was better off blocking than stumbling in one day.
But the original was just talking about feeding cats human vegan food. Then after admins stepped in, some mod went and found a single research article that said it could be possible with supplements…
But I think the supplements came from animals anyways?
So they advocated for something that would harm pets, then found the absolute bare minimum “proof” that in a very narrow situation no one was doing it might not harm the animal “significantly”.
It legit seems like they’re just trolling and trying to make vegans seem insufferable
Is that what this is about? Anyone that can’t grasp nutrition concepts that an 8 year old can understand, shouldn’t be taking care of any living being
Edit: After reading more into it, I realise I was wrong. In the past, I had heard of people trying vegan diets with cats and they ended up dying, hence my original opinion. It is apparently not that clear cut. I still don’t think it’s a good idea to put a cat on a vegan diet unless it’s necessary.
