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
The comments in here are unbelievable. This post was about the systemic moderation issues that lead to the incident, the team’s response to it, and how to deal with such a problems in the future.
Half the comments: CATS CAN’T EAT VEGAN
The other half: CATS CAN TOO EAT VEGAN
There are people here who need to go back to fucking reddit.
The question is at the root of which moderator’s actions are correct. There’s a reactionary bias from tons of Reddit-fugees that came out of vegan bashing and anti-vegan hysteria which we see crop up repeatedly.
It can be difficult to distinguish between people sincere, abet misguided, beliefs and outright trolls. And moderation takes a significant temporal and emotional toll. “Vegans are killing their pets/kids!!!” is a popular panic phrase intended to gin up hostility. Consequentaly, the mods in these communities are playing endless wack-a-mole with trolls who just want to conflate veganism with an esoteric form of cruelty.
Establishing a bright line of appropriate content is important for good moderation. But to know where that line is, you need some degree of objection information.
Which brings us back to the fundamental question of whether safe, reliable vegan cat food exists (spoilers: it’s been around for decades). But if you don’t accept that premise, you’re going to see any mod censorship as some diabolical cat killing agenda.
Cats are obligate carnivores. It’s trivial to stroll into any store and get food that will make your cat healthy but its not clear how easy it is to get vegan food that will do the same. Seems like if you don’t believe in eating meat you should just not have a little carnivore in your home. For instance rabbits can be trained to live inside, cuddle with you, and poop in a box.
go back to fucking reddit
Yeah, fuck reddit, and fuck u/spez.
Er, am I doing this right?
Vegans win this time.
In the end, vegans are always going to win, because a vegan way of life is one (but not the only) precondition for ways of life that are actually sustainable.
Good to know admins wont ever face any consequences
Will your next statement address the existence of a bot that lets community moderators site-ban and IP blacklist accounts without any appeal process?
Between the MediaBiasFactCheck and this bot how much power does Rooki have over the instance?
I think what people generally want is not reddit. The mods in reddit have almost no accountability from admin.
Oftentimes comments are removed just because a mod doesn’t agree or like the content.
I was banned from r/Ukraine simply for saying we shouldn’t demonize the entire population of Russia for the actions of their government. I later argued with the mod through their “arbitration process” and he would not unban me. (What really hurt is that I’m Ukrainian. It was an improvement sub for me)
No one wants that! Please don’t let that happen here!
I’m personally of the opinion that if a community is poorly moderated, you should just make a new community that is better aligned to the level of moderation users actually want and not to rely on a centralized admin team. They should really just be preventing serious abuse, like grooming, and provide support and advice to mods.
Ultimately its not sustainable and gives Admins too much centralized power to determine to that level what is and isn’t appropriate mod behavior. I get that what you experienced is generally dickish behavior, but that can easily spin out of control when it relies on admin judgement calls like that.
In reality, even admins don’t hold the ultimate power. This is a federated platform and there are lots of other instances. It’s an extension of the sentiment you express - if people don’t like how things are done on one instance, they can move the community, or even start a new instance.
I was banned from /r/grindr for suggesting it’s ok for trans people to use it. It’s legitimately one of the most blatantly, unapologetically terrible mods I’ve ever seen, and it’s just him.
I appreciate you guys owning up to this, especially since a lot of people here seemed determined to ignore the actual issue and just start a redditesque circle jerk about vegans.
Thanks! When we fall down, we get back up and try to learn from our mistakes to do better next time ✌️
I’m reminded of an article talking about an outage at Yahoo! back when they were huge. It turned out the whole outage came down to one person messing up. The manager was asked how they let the person go and they said “Whatever the cost of that outage we just spent it on training, that person will never make that mistake again, nor will they allow someone else to make it”.
If you have mods trying to manage things and they make a mistake you don’t axe them, you discuss the situation and work in good policy for going forward. This one case is costly to the community, but nowhere near as costly as losing someone with this experience.
As for the vegan diet for cats issue, in general people who do vegan diets for kids and animals run a high risk of causing harm. Is it possible to do correctly? Maybe. Is it likely that an individual who is not trained in that field will manage it? No. But should it be investigated? Sure, but o my with experiments that actually do teach us something, no wasted studies of 3 weeks on a diet and checking blood tests, or comparing vegan kibble to omnivore kibble. Still, the same issues plague human dietetics and we don’t have the answers there either, so yeah, maybe we should all chill a little and work together rather than identifying with one side of the argument and vilifying the other.
The idea that it’s dangerous to raise children on a vegan diet is unequivocally false, and misinformation. Every major health authority has made statements affirming that a properly implemented plant-based diet is entirely nutritionally adequate for all stages of life. Literally the only supplement that’s strictly necessary in the majority of cases is b12 - which is something that everyone should be supplementing with anyway. Aside from that it’s easier to get adequate nutrition from plant-based diets than it is on the Standard American Diet.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27886704/
https://bitesizevegan.org/the-crime-of-raising-vegan-kids-when-diet-is-deadly/
The integrity in this post is off the charts.
Love to see it.
Absolutely agree. This is an issue where it could have easily been covered up, but the leadership opted for total transparency.
They admitted the mistake, showed how it happened, and worked out an agreement with the community to avoid the problem in the future.
Forget comparison to corporate media (it’s not even close), I’ve seen issues in the Fediverse handled 100x worse than this.
The only person with integrity I see here is the admin that initially removed the comments promoting animal abuse. Those that backed down and restored the comments caved to the pressure of an extreme, insular community and sided against *defenseless animals. I see no integrity in their actions no matter how they try to spin it.
I happen to agree with the position on diet. But that’s not really the point here.
Any community interested in truth and safety must have a consistent measure for truth. Human civilization relies on scientific consensus. That concensus can change, and it can be flawed, but it’s really the best system we have. Admins/ have stated that they are relying on that for their decisions.
In this case, there is not a strong enough consensus to make a determination. I haven’t reviewed the research personally, but I’m confident that the admins have. They made the right call based on the information presented.
Firstly, as said repeatedly, scientific research is inconclusive. Secondly, removing an entire mod team should still need consensus among other admins consulted.
Bull fucking shit on the scientific research being inconclusive.
show me a conclusive review on replacing meat with vegan amino acid & stuff supplements
We don’t know if it’s bad for them therefore we shall feed our carnivorous animals tofu and beans.
Average vegan IQ moment
No vegan suggested feeding cats only tofu and beans. Weird strawman.
Only weirdos who feed their cats tofu and beans would bother replying to a 3 month old comment on a drama that has washed over.
I’m not a vegan. I’m saying that the topic is inconclusive, and we should not treat removing the comments as a clear-cut good action. From what I can see, the debate is quite heated and not isolated, so it probably has validity.
When is science ever “conclusive”?
That very concept is anti-science.
Nowadays “the science is inconclusive” is used to weasel out of corners that grifters paint themselves into.
Scientific consensus now there’s a concept worth understanding and putting forth in arguments such as this one.
If you think it’s inconclusive that cats are carnivorous, please never own a pet
Here are the studies you’re asking for:
-https://sustainablepetfood.info/
-https://bmcvetres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12917-021-02754-8
-https://www.magonlinelibrary.com/doi/abs/10.12968/vetn.2022.13.6.252
-https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0253292
-https://www.mdpi.com/2306-7381/10/1/52
-https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0284132
-https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240584402411609X
Nice, are there non-MDPI review articles? MDPI is a bit controversial.
Good news, thanks for the open communication.
You’re welcome!✌️❤️ We try and be easy to get a hold of as well.
Not that I think Rooki was wrong with what they did. But it doesn’t take a genius to figure out how fast such stuff can get out of control.
Thing happened. Admins reflected on thing. Came up with solution. Communicated solution with community in an understandable and transparent manner. Perfect.
If that lazy fucks over at Reddit would have been half as good as you with theirs jobs, we probably wouldn’t be here to begin with.
This is all PR, lemmy.world didnt make good with their vegan community, they just want everyone else to think they are fair and level headed. Reddit has the exact same PR, except they were trying to make money openly, while most assume lemmy.world admins are losing or breaking even (whether thats true or not).
Put simply, reddit was trying to collect more profit from their users one way, and lemmy.world is trying to collect its donations in another, but PR servers both cases.
Doesnt really matter theres plenty of space elsewhere for the vegan community, which is the beauty of the fediverse.
Mods aside, the Reddit app is still garbage
😂👍
The user interface where people write their comments is broken with the resizing.
You’re beating a dead horse here. The most common association with that app is “barfing a little bit before deleting it”.
Feeding a fed horse is better :)
The comments were removed for violating our instance rule against animal abuse
The comments have been restored
What… So the rules don’t matter if enough people get angry, I see
cats can live on a vegan diet. so it’s hardly animal abuse.
But are they actually healthy and happy?
if the food is palatable and nutritious one would image that they are.
Is the food palatable and nutritious?
there are ways to measure both.
What are the results of those measurements?
that the food is enjoyable.
regular.biscuits given to cats contain a lot of artificial flavours and vegetable matter already.
Well in germany you would get up to 3 years prison time for trying that bullshit. because it absolutely is animal abuse. quote the The German Veterinary Association for Animal Welfare
"A strictly vegan cat diet [would] be tantamount to an unauthorized, uncontrolled animal experiment and violates § 3 No. 10 of the Animal Welfare Act "
“Force-feeding for the purpose of an ideologically justified change of diet to vegetarian rations is a violation of § 3 No. of the Animal Welfare Act”
cheery picking laws aside, if the food provides all the necessary nutrition and the cat enjoys it, then I see no issue.
Do you have proof of that being the case or are you just throwing stuff out there?
Ima throw your own words back at you.
You are cherry picking the few favorable studies over the heaps of unfavorable studies.
You asked for peer reviewed studies into the palatability and nutrition of vegan cat food.
I provided.
show me some unfavourable ones then
To be clear, while the idea that discussion is welcome is good the moderators of c/vegan do not tolerate discussion. Any opinion that goes against the orthodoxy of the echo bunker leads to a permanent ban. If you express any opinion other that, “It’s fully acceptable to force your extremist philosophy on an obligate carnivore by feeding it an unnatural vegan diet” you will be banned. It’s an incredibly closed minded and intolerant community.
Forgive me for being suspicious of your comment. There is a huge anti-vegan bias in society, and many argue against veganism, not in good faith. Can you provide any examples of the mods doing this?
Sure…this discussion came up a couple of months ago. Several people argued that feeding a herbivorous diet to a carnivore was animal abuse. Everyone arguing that point, including myself, was banned and all comments not supporting the group think in the echo bunker were removed.
Need more?
More would be great. What sort of arguments did you make? We’re you discussing the science?
There probably just sick of every thread, every damn thread, having people coming in and trying to debate. It’s not a community for that and asking people to not do that is well within their rights. If somebody went into an anime community and kept saying live action is better, they should get banned. Doesn’t mean that community is an echo chamber.
What you’re describing is an echo bunker. The anime example isn’t a good fit, though. In the case of c/vegan they are taking about animal abuse, feeding an animal that evolved to eat meat and that needs to eat meat to be healthy a vegan diet. Whether anime or live action is better doesn’t harm anything. Feeding a cat a vegan diet has a real possibility of causing health problems or death.
No one gives a shit what they want to eat. I look at the pictures of the brown slop that they post claiming its the best recipe ever and laugh. I don’t care. When they talk about doing that to a cat or dog I care. Those are the posts that get a lot of reaction from people who love animals.
The hate that vegans get on Lemmy is when they push themselves into discussions of farming, hunting, fishing, etc. to push their ideological purity on other and to shame people who are just going about their lives or when the talk about abusing their pets.
they are talking about animal abuse
they push themselves into discussions of farming, hunting, fishing
So when vegans talk about abuse it deserves moderation but when non-vegans talk about killing, maiming, and eating animals that’s totally cool, not abuse, and above reproach? One should have outsiders come in the the community to give their opinions but the other shouldn’t? Come on, you’re not really that bad at making a point, are you?
Your question is loaded with a sense of absolute moral superiority. I raise chickens for eggs and meat. I don’t abuse them or maim them. I treat them well, feed them high quality food, and provide clean, dry, warm housing that protects them from predators. The roam freely during the day and come home to roost at night. When it is time for them to die they die in the most humane way possible.
What vegans are talking about is pure, selfish arrogance. They’re going to take a carnivore and force it to eat an inappropriate diet to satisy their own selfish needs. Get a herbivore instead. Get a rabbit. They are cat like and the thrive on a vegan diet.
If you treat your chickens so well and feel so good about it, why did you put your killing them in the passive voice like it’s something that just happens? Just say you chop their heads off or whatever. Don’t hide it.
“Vegans are arrogant and abusive but let me tell you why I’m allowed to kill animals and am above reproach.” Come on, you kettle, it’s clearly not arrogance you have a problem with.
Vegans causing controversy. This is my complete lack of surprise.
This is not a productive comment. It’s probably best to discuss the pros and cons of veganism and it’s followers somewhere else.
tbf, pwning vegans is one of the internet’s most time-honored traditions. Up there with harassing women.
But yeah, you’re right.
What if they’re American vegans who use the imperial system of measurement, don’t own a bidet, and microwave their water for tea? Should I break out the cross and hammer?
Do they do crossfit? Are they an Arch Linux user?
Vegans have their rights to opinions just as you and me. This is not about t vegans vs us, but about how to handle disagreements We never learn if we just sensor everyone we disagree with
Who said they don’t? I just find it hilarious that one of said idiotic opinions (cats should be vegan!) is the cause of so much controversy.
To be totally honest you have nothing to apologize for. Dogs and cats are metabolically different to humans and cannot survive on a vegan diet unlike us. Forcing obligate carnivore pets on vegan diets is certainly animal abuse.
I remember when there was a growing campaign to ban r/nonewnormal on Reddit due to it being a hub of medical disinformation and conspiracy theories surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, and that this led to a blackout much like the later API protests.
Rather than read the room and introduce a new rule banning medical disinformation, Reddit’s Tintin-looking moron of a CEO instead threw out tonnes of BS statistics on brigading likely plucked out of his own sphincter, and banned the subreddit because their activity exceeded this arbitrary percentage he made up.
And before you tell me this guy’s figures were legit, aren’t we forgetting that he pathologically lied about his interactions with the Sync developer? Spez is a snake.
Dogs are omnivores like us and can do fine on a plant based diet. Sometimes even recommended for health reasons for dogs with anal gland issues.
Cats are a bit more complex but require taurine. Modern mass produced cat food is supplemented with synthetic taurine anyway so there isn’t much difference.
I have a bunch of cats I feed vegan diets to, but to anyone concerned that I’m doing animal abuse, don’t worry - occasionally, I wring one of their necks and chop it up to feed to the others, so clearly I’m not abusing them.
Seriously though, I do not understand how non-vegans are all getting on their high horse about “animal abuse” when their preferred course of action is just abusing different animals. Cats do not hold a higher moral standing than other animals just because they look cute. You know they feed cows literal shit? Do you think that’s part of their “natural diet?”
I don’t have any cats or other pets, but even if the worst claims are true, the people doing it would be no worse than what carnists do every day. It’s simply that abuse against certain categories of sentient beings is so normalized that people don’t even recognize it as abuse, no matter how bad it is.
I have a bunch of cats I feed vegan diets to, but to anyone concerned that I’m doing animal abuse, don’t worry - occasionally, I wring one of their necks and chop it up to feed to the others, so clearly I’m not abusing them.
Thats canibalism if you would do that. And already reading that gives me some worries how you would treat your cats.
I don’t have any cats or other pets
Huh didnt you beginn the whole comment by telling you “have bunch of cats”?
And this comment is just a “Not my opinion = Bad” vibe. I think you are just here to rant about how bad other (non-vegan) people are and make everyone feel like they are lower than you.
The mods at the lemmy world vegan community don’t see things the same way. From this post:
“Today the lemmy.world admins made a follow up post about the incident where the admin Rooki interfered with moderation of this community in a way which was determined to be against lemmy.world TOS and factually incorrect. Throughout this incident there has been no communication with me, nor to my knowledge any of of the other moderators of this community. Rooki quitely undid his actions and edited his post to admit fault however there was no public acknowledgement of this from him. In fact I wasn’t even told I was reinstated as a mod which is quite funny.”
“The lemmy.world admins’ response appears more focused on managing their own reputations and justifying similar actions in the future than providing a good environment for vegans, and other similarly maligned groups. Their statements about wanting to handle misinformation and overreach better in the future ring a bit hollow when they won’t take actions to address the anti-vegan circlejerks under their update posts which abound with misinformation and disinformation.”
“The legalese written basically allows for the same thing to happen, and that if it does the admin decision is to stand while moderators have to quietly resolve the conflict at the admins’ leisure. Presumably with a similarly weak public apology and barely visible record correction after the fact.”
Codified anti-vegan bias based on reactionary views? That’s unfortunate. Glad I’m not on that instance.
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.
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.
