Intro
We would like to address some of the points that have been raised by some of our users (and by one of our communities here on Lemmy.World) on /c/vegan regarding a recent post concerning vegan diets for cats. We understand that the vegan community here on Lemmy.World is rightfully upset with what has happened. In the following paragraphs we will do our best to respond to the major points that we’ve gleaned from the threads linked here.
Links
Actions in question
Admin removing comments discussing vegan cat food in a community they did not moderate.
The comments have been restored.
The comments were removed for violating our instance rule against animal abuse (https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/#11-attacks-on-users). Rooki is a cat owner himself and he was convinced that it was scientific consensus that cats cannot survive on a vegan diet. This originally justified the removal.
Even if one of our admins does not agree with what is posted, unless the content violates instance rules it should not be removed. This was the original justification for action.
Removing some moderators of the vegan community
Removed moderators have been reinstated.
This was in the first place a failure of communication. It should have been clearly communicated towards the moderators why a certain action was taken (instance rules) and that the reversal of that action would not be considered (during the original incident).
The correct way forward in this case would have been an appeal to the admin team, which would have been handled by someone other than the admin initially acting on this.
We generally discuss high impact actions among team before acting on them. This should especially be the case when there is no strong urgency on the act performed. Since this was only a moderator removal and not a ban, this should have been discussed among the team prior to action.
Going forward we have agreed, as a team, to discuss such actions first, to help prevent future conflict
Posting their own opposing comment and elevating its visibility
Moderators’ and admins’ comments are flagged with flare, which is okay and by design on Lemmy. But their comments are not forced above the comments of other users for the purpose of arguing a point.
These comments were not elevated to appear before any other users comments.
In addition, Rooki has since revised his comments to be more subjective and less reactive.
Community Responses
The removed comments presented balanced views on vegan cat food, citing scientific research supporting its feasibility if done properly.
Presenting scientifically backed peer reviewed studies is 100% allowed, and encouraged. While we understand anyone can cherry pick studies, if a individual can find a large amount of evidence for their case, then by all accounts they are (in theory) technically correct.
That being said, using facts to bully others is not in good faith either. For example flooding threads with JSTOR links.
The topic is controversial but not clearly prohibited by site rules.
That is correct, at the time there was no violation of site wide rules.
Rooki’s actions appear to prioritize his personal disagreement over following established moderation guidelines.
Please see the above regarding addressing moderator policy.
Conclusions
Regarding moderator actions
We will not be removing Rooki from his position as moderator, as we believe that this is a disproportionate response for a heat-of-the-moment response.
Everybody makes mistakes, and while we do try and hold the site admin staff to a higher standard, calling for folks resignation from volunteer positions over it would not fair to them. Rooki has given up 100’s of hours of his free time to help both Lemmy.World, FHF and the Fediverse as a whole grown in far reaching ways. You don’t immediately fire your staff when they make a bad judgment call.
While we understand that this may not be good enough for some users, we hope that they can be understanding that everyone, no matter the position, can make mistakes.
We’ve also added a new by-laws section detailing the course of action users should ideally take, when conflict arises. In the event that a user needs to go above the admin team, we’ve provided a secure link to the operations team (who the admin’s report to, ultimately). See https://legal.lemmy.world/bylaws/#12-site-admin-issues-for-community-moderators for details.
TL;DR In the event of an admin action that is deemed unfair or overstepping, moderators can raise this with our operations team for an appeal/review.
Regarding censorship claims
Regarding the alleged censorship, comments were removed without a proper reason. This was out of line, and we will do our best to make sure that this does not happen again. We have updated our legal policy to reflect the new rules in place that bind both our user AND our moderation staff regarding removing comments and content. We WANT users to hold us accountable to the rules we’ve ALL agreed to follow, going forward. If members of the community find any of the rules we’ve set forth unreasonable, we promise to listen and adjust these rules where we can. Our terms of service is very much a living document, as any proper binding governing document should be.
Controversial topics can and should be discussed, as long as they are not causing risk of imminent physical harm. We are firm believers in the hippocratic oath of “do no harm”.
We encourage users to also list pros and cons regarding controversial viewpoints to foster better discussion. Listing the cons of your viewpoint does not mean you are wrong or at fault, just that you are able to look at the issue from another perspective and aware of potential points of criticism.
While we want to allow our users to express themselves on our platform, we also do not want users to spread mis-information that risks causing direct physical harm to another individual, origination or property owned by the before mentioned. To echo the previous statement “do no harm”.
To this end, we have updated our legal page to make this more clear. We already have provisions for attacking groups, threatening individuals and animal harm, this is a logical extension of this to both protect our users and to protect our staff from legal recourse and make it more clear to everyone. We feel this is a very reasonable compromise, and take these additional very seriously.
Sincerely,
FHF / LemmyWorld Operations Team
EDIT: Added org operations contact info
Seems like you deleted your account, sorry to see you go.
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Good call.
Agree or disagree the problem here is an admin that feels he can moderate any community on his instance based on only emotional response.
When shit blows up in his face he quickly undoes his little mistake and someone else apologizes.
So what would you think would be an appropriate response? A flogging?
To have their admin powers revoked, obviously.
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If you are even remotely serious, I would prefer living my life never talking to you again. I stopped giving insanity a voice I’m willing to entertain.
I think everybody in most jobs/positions should have the opportunity to learn and grow. This is “just” a moderator and some leeway should be given, IMHO.
If it happens again by the mod, and if it becomes a “regular” thing by several mods, then the guillotine should be used frequently and without trials.
Is there any statement from Rooki showing learning or growth?
I have no problem with people making mistakes, accidentally suspending an account for example, it happens.
This wasn’t an accident. The admin intentionally deleted posts just because he personally disagreed with them and removed moderators because he disagreed with them.
When you are in a position of authority and you have power over others, if you give in to that urge to use that power for your own benefit to the detriment of others, even once, you will do it again. It is seductive and easy. This is just human psychology. It’s how authoritarianism thrives.
By allowing a corrupt admin to remain, the admin team have demonstrated that they find that behaviour at least somewhat acceptable, and therefore there’s no reason to learn and grow, except to learn how far you can go before there’s backlash.
An emotional response to potential animal abuse just makes the admin human. It’s just plain weird to assume otherwise. The admins aren’t robots, they’re real people, and while I don’t necessarily disagree with either decision they made, I find it very odd that people want to hide the cold fact that this decision reflects very poorly on the content hosted within lemmy.world.
By the beard of Zeus, what a horrible day to be literate and morbidly curious.
These comments feel like a basketball game, except there’s a wall in the middle and teams are just scoring points on their own hoop. Also every two comments someone throws a shovelful of shit over the wall.
Yea I just randomly went to go look at all posts I stead of my subscribed feed for a change and saw this, I have no prior clu of what the hell happened but I’m morbidly curious too lol
This is one of those topics where everyone involved has strong convictions
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Totally missing the point of the thread. Read the room, dude.
They are for genocide so not surprising they can’t read a room
people really hate getting pointed out when pro genocide
Just get a tortoise ffs.
And yet do I see correctly, that nothing at all was done about the mods that removed posts stating with proof, that the AKC agrees that cats are oblate carnivores and should not eat vegan cat food.
This whole thing reads like an apology to those who were wrong to begin with.
LOLOL
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All of that was over people fighting about feeding a carnivore pet plant based pet food? You’re f*cking kidding me right?
Wtf? An essay on cat’s diet? Is this becoming reddit? Please tell me no
lol Lemmy turning into reddit with its “amazing” moderators and ban hammers. not surprised.
Funny seeing carnivors arguing over whats animal abuse an whats not.
Like you would have fucking clue ?
At least we kill them instead of prolonging their suffering.
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Why do you keep animals shackled in your home, perform surgeries on them, remove their agency.
Having a pet at all is antithetical to vegan ideology, and making a decision about their diet (without their consent, because animals can’t consent) is exactly what you are attacking others for.
Don’t want to feed a cat meat? Easy solution, don’t have it as a pet, it’s not your choice to make in the first place.
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I don’t understand why you think I, someone advocating against pet ownership, would be for dog food?
This is just an ad hominem.
This right here is the same mood as using cis as a slur. Seriously, get some help.
Feeding a carnivore a vegan diet indeed is animal abuse. Cats can survive, but survival and healthy are not the same. Cats on a vegan diet get sick much faster and die younger, statistically according to vets. I’m a vegan, I have cats, I feed them meat. If you don’t like feeding your pets meat, get a herbivore pet instead.
The way things were handled may have been wrong, but animal abuse should be banned from Lemmy imo.
And just like the Jews have started a new holocaust, Lemmy lives long enough to become Reddit.
I consider it animal abuse, but I can understand that there’s an argument that it’s not. I think the distinction of requiring scientific evidence supporting their claim is a reasonable requisite to allow the discussion.
It seems like things worked out here. My knee-jerk reaction would be to classify vegan diets in carnivor pets to be animal abuse and probably would have reported. But discussion happened to allow for discourse, and they rolled back the decision to at least allow for transparency.
And to be clear, I still think it is hands down animal abuse and hope that others come to the same conclusion. Animals don’t have the ability to make an informed choice. Subjecting them to a dangerous diet to satisfy your own niche moral compass is evil.
It’s not about you, it’s about the animal. Get over yourself.
But again, I think it’s OK to have the discussion, and I hope the community buries their side into oblivion.
I agree with you. I think it’s OK to discuss how animals are abused by their owner but it’s not ok to discuss whether or not you should abuse your animal because of your personal believes.
Talking about it makes people aware. Like most people are not aware about the animal abuse behind animal products, why the industry is immortal. When you don’t know any better, why would you change your diet. Having civil discussions are necessary to spread awareness so society can change to be better.
Sadly many terror vegans (the social justice warrior vegans active on internet who lack communication skills and are comparable to evangelical brain washers) are unable to keep discussions civil. They claim a monopoly on the truth and attack and shame anyone who isn’t as vegan as they are. They are the face of vegans as they are the ones constantly taking a stage. They give vegans a bad reputation and it only convinces people to oppose veganism. So I’m not surprised how shit hit the fan in the vegan sub. But yet again, this shit gives vegans a bad reputation.
These terror vegans are so extremely good in reaching the exact opposite of what they intend.
