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
IDK it seems like pretty clear animal abuse to me
Cats are obligate carnivores. It is 100% animal abuse.
Look at the studies before making such claims, cats are actually healthier on a plant-based diet with synthetic taurine, B12 and vitamin A through the form of reputable kibble brands.
Sources:
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
Can we not restart the argument please.
To me, it’s a lot more important in this post to look at the response from mods and admins to a disagreement (and infighting, and mistakes made).
Personally it seems like it was handled well, at least eventually (here). Do you feel one way or the other?
Sometimes I feel like people would like to restart this argument every time it is mentioned, even after 2 threads with hundreds of comments on the topic
People like drama.
Cat drama in particular seems to always hit maximum outrage really fast.
Animal abuse is a touchy subject for many people, yes.
People like to virtue signal about things they don’t know anything about.
Carnivores like to call vegans animal abusers.
Bro can you not
See everyone just loves drama, no matter which side they are on.
deleted by creator
*Carnists. Carnivores have no choice in consuming meat. Carnists delibrately choose to do so even when it’s not required.
but if the cat enjoyed the vegan food and the food provided all the nutrients, would you have an issue with it?
Who is arguing? One is factual and the other is willfully ignorant to the point of harming their animal. It’s like giving flat earth any credibility, it’s objectively against science.
That is outright false and there is no need for false equivalencies. As studies support the fact that a plant-based diet is healthy for cats.
As reputable Kibble brands have the needed synthetic taurine, B12 and vitamin A.
Sources:
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
Because what you consider a fact is based on studies that don’t provide as compelling evidence as you want to believe they do.
Generally speaking, it’s probably best to not do it, but calling it outright abuse requires evidence that it is causing actual harm, and the scientific consensus on it is not as solid as you think it is.
Recent academic review of many past studies have found that it’s inconclusive.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9860667/
Basically, we need more studies before we can start deleting shit on accusations of animal abuse.
That brings up another side of this, the academic discussion side. It’s good if the moderation policies allow discussion, since that’s how we can talk about new research and changing science. We are a discussion forum afterall
If a group accounts seem to be pushing a certain viewpoint or moderating in bad faith, then that’s a related but possibly separate issue
It’s important to consider that the academic discussion on the plant-based diet for cats has seismically changed in the last 3 years due to the recently published studies. I implore you to read more about the topic:
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
I’ve looked into this and every worthwhile study seems to point to issues with the vegan diet and then potential benefits. I’ve not seen one that shows serious positive aspects without negative ones. I’m open to being shown any though (aside from the one everyone seems to link where they just talked to cat owners). I’m not trying to spin this debate back up, just saying that the science does seem pretty clear.
Even in this one: According to the U.S. National Research Council’s (NRC) recommendations on nutrient requirements for dogs and cats [15,16], potentially problematic elements in vegan/vegetarian diets for dogs and cats could be: (1) insufficient protein; (2) unbalanced fats; and (3) nutrient insufficiencies [17]. For example, it has been shown that exercising dogs that consume unbalanced plant protein diets can develop anemia and a marked decrease in red blood cell hemoglobin levels but will return to health if the diet with vegetable protein is balanced properly [18].
deleted by creator
Did you read the study they linked and really think that what you posted was the same kind of thing?
…everyone is arguing? Considering the studies given by both sides, and the constant promotion of that one brand of vegan cat food, it’s hard to give one side a clear objective win (though I do lean toward giving the cat meat).
That’s the carnist personal bias seeping in. The majority isn’t always right about everything, consider this when veganism is brought up.
To me it just indicates how much of the Lemmy population hasn’t studied any bio past maybe first year HS level, or any advanced chemistry either for that matter. And how much people on the internet like fighting with vegans. The two influences together are very powerful.
Hey the more education you have the more likely you’re to be vegan.
Or maybe people just don’t like animal abuse? It’s okay to sometimes just go with the straightforward explanation. Don’t abuse cattle et all for human diets, don’t abuse your cat via its diet, and so on.
There’s some fallacious reasoning right there when cats can be healthier on a plant-based diet:
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
Sure, understandable. But their scientific arguments for it being animal abuse are very distinctly first year bio-tier.
If it’s a tricky line between keeping your cat healthy and unhealthy, just get a different pet.
It is relevant though, since the issue of it being animal abuse or not is central to the whole thing.
Is it not animal abuse? Then what has happened in this post is correct.
Is it animal abuse? Then this post shows that the admins will roll over if they get enough push back from a group of users.
The reason given by Rooki for most of the actions was “missinformation”, not anything related to animal abuse. One of the two mods was demoted for “endangering pets”. At the time of the incident, the only vaguely related rule was 6. Violent Content that talks about visual content depicting dismemberment, murder, suicide, animal abuse, and so on. Though the OP is confusing and at times inaccurate, it still accepts that “at the time there was no violation of site wide rules.”
The response of mods and admins is that they removed content that promotes animal abuse and that got people mad enough so they went and restored the content promoting animal abuse.
Lying about the situation does not make you correct.
- this post is 4 month old and the drama washed over.
- this is exactly what happened.
Thanks, we’re trying to chime in where we can and do hope the post at least helps provide some transparency on what happened. 🙏
Whether a pet gets the food it needs isn’t something you can even have an opinion about. You can have understandings, misunderstandings, or the scientific understanding itself could change. Anything attempting to hone that is fine.
To frame something like that as a disagreement is fundamentally dishonest. The question is what’s nutritionally best for cats. We and our stupid feelings are secondary. I don’t even have any familiarity with the subject myself, I only know it’s not the realm of opinions. Cats need meat or they don’t, in certain amounts, types, at certain intervals, etc.
Cats need meat or they don’t
And yet this binary assumption that you’re taking completely for granted for some reason is fundamentally flawed. Cats need amino acids from meat that they cannot produce themselves. The scientific research being conducted is over whether these amino acids can be artificially produced and vegan cat food fortified with them in such a way that the cats can properly absorb them. If yes, then voila, you have healthful vegan cat food.
This also supposes that there are not other essential (to cats) nutrients beyond taurine that would be absent.
True. I believe B12 is the other big one, although that is trivially supplemented to my recollection.
Whether a pet gets the food it needs isn’t something you can even have an opinion about.
To be fair, I have a pretty strong opinion on pets getting the food they need. My opinion is that not feeding an animal appropriately is, at best, neglectful.
The great thing is that it’s easy to find out what is an appropriate diet for any pet, clever scientists figured it out and wrote up guidelines for us to follow. Here in the UK for example we would follow the European FEDIAF;
Pet food nutritional guidelines for manufacturers in the UK are produced by FEDIAF (the European Pet Food Industry). These guidelines (also known as Codes) detail the nutritional needs of cats and dogs at varying life stages. They are regularly updated to include the latest nutritional research.
https://europeanpetfood.org/self-regulation/safety
So long as you’re following the guidelines and giving your pet all the nutrients it needs - regardless of how they’re produced (vegan food is fine so long as it replicates the full dietary needs of the animal for example) - you’re good 😊👍
I know it’s silly to have to point that out, I’m not sure why people argued over it (I didn’t see the original discourse). But yes, just to reiterate, it doesn’t matter how you prefer to source the food - vegan, halal, whatever fits your beliefs - just so long as it is a nutritionally complete diet for the animal <3
On the subject of admin/moderation, it is wonderful to see the team trying to be thoughtful, transparent, and kind even in the face of high tempers and heated beliefs. I wish we had more of this calibre of person out in the world :-)
(vegan food is fine so long as it replicates the full dietary needs of the animal for example) - you’re good 😊
Vegan food is the opposite of replicating the full dietary needs of anything
Ok, I’m a literal butcher but citation needed. You’re just being obnoxious (and this isn’t even the topic of this thread)
Oh god, oh fuck, we need to get the word out to these highly educated nutritional scientists, cardiologists, gastroenterologists, endocrinologists, pulmonologists, oncologists, bariatricians, and nephrologists that “it’s the opposite, actually” as soon as possible. I’ll bet they’ll feel like idiots when they need to retract the dozens of meta-analyses and systemic reviews they’ve meticulously authored both showing that plant-based diets tend to be healthier than omnivorous ones and giving explanations for why.
A lot of these studies are funded by vegan grifters so no yeah no
Yep. The doublespeak here is wild. “Controversial topics can and should be discussed, as long as they are not causing risk of imminent physical harm. Therefore, we are leaving up comments that cause imminent risk of physical harm.”
Forget the particular details of this issue. It feels way, way more strongly like they’re trying to duck out of having to take action.
https://www.benevo.com/vegan-cat-food-from-benevo/
Benevo Cat foods contain all the nutrients an adult cat needs, including a wide range of vitamins (including A, B, D, E, K), essential fatty acids and taurine, without the need for slaughterhouse meat. Although obligate carnivores in the wild, domestic cats still need nutrients they would normally source from prey. Thankfully Benevo Cat contains all those nutrients in a bioavailable kibble.
Benevo Cat is a professional cat food, created by Benevo in 2005, formulated and checked by independent animal nutritionists to meet the AAFCO(USA) and FEDIAF(Europe) guidelines for animal nutrition.
We’ve had safe and healthy variants of vegan cat food for 20 years. Trying to elevate the question to animal abuse speaks entirely to personal ignorance.
Thank you for sharing this. People need to learn more about this topic before they speak like armchair nutrition experts.
Cut and paste blurb from a marketing website from a manufacturer. That you cut and pasted from your top level comment which currently is at -30 due to it’s lack of actual sources or anything of value.
This is not helpful to anyone and you may be out of your depth if you think it is.
I am not taking a position on feeding cats vegan food. I am just pointing out you are arguing so weakly you’re actually doing your position a disservice.
Your argument is very weak, you are just citing a company that sells vegan food for animals, a very clear conflict of interest.
For instance, I can also cite some Google PR page on how much they care about privacy.
Farm feedstock.contain all the nutrients an adult cow needs, including a wide range of vitamins (including A, B, D, E, K), essential fatty acids and taurine, without the need for grass. Although obligate herbivores in the wild, domestic cows still need nutrients they would normally source from vegetation. Thankfully farm feedstock contains all those nutrients in a bioavailable grain.
grain is a professional cow food, created by grain manufacturers in 50,000BC, formulated and checked by independent animal nutritionists to meet the AAFCO(USA) and FEDIAF(Europe) guidelines for animal nutrition.
We’ve had safe and healthy variants of cow food for 52,000 years. Trying to elevate the question to animal abuse speaks entirely to personal ignorance.
Eta - modifying the diet of a domesticated animal for your convenience seems to run contrary to the premise of minimising animal cruelty.
You might be surprised at how much corn, grains, and other non-meat stuff there is in cat food. Particularly in cheap dry kibble that nobody typically bats an eye at someone feeding to their cat.
This conversation just seems so weird to me. The number of people who feed their cats anything similar to what they’d be eating in the wild is minuscule.
Meat isn’t some magic substance, biological chemical reactions turns grass into cows. That you think you can’t take those nutrients and make them bioavailable to an obligate carnivore is absurd. Ever seen an impossible burger?
And if you think the cruelty stems from the idea that cats wouldn’t like it, I gotta say. I have my cat on an expensive grain free meat heavy diet. And I know for a fact that he goes crazy for the cheap shitty corn based purina kibble. He has busted into other people’s homes to steal kibble from their cats.
So is it cruel for me to feed him a more nature based diet when it’s clear he prefers corn based trash?
I don’t see any reason why a functional vegan cat food couldn’t exist.
Is domestication animal cruelty?
“Our vegan cat food is totally safe and normal”, says the vegan cat food manufacturers.
You have to be a vegan to believe that bullshit lmao
“Our vegan cat food is totally safe and normal”, says the vegan cat food manufacturers.
You’re making the genetic fallacy. If you dont believe the source then read the reports from the independent animal nutritionists mentioned above.
So, by your logic, shouldn’t there be a bunch of malnourished and dying cats as a result of people buying this food and only letting their cats subsist on it?
Where are the outraged customers? Where are the lawsuits?
People who are dumb enough to spend extra money on vegan food for their carnivorous pets aren’t usually smart enough to realize it was the problem.
And as for the few that eventually figure it out, they’re smart enough to realize saying “I fed my carnivorous pets a vegan diet” does not reflect well on them.
So you have no evidence at all and are purely speculating. Gotcha
My evidence is vegans of Lemmy going up in arms against moderation because they deleted content about feeding a carnivorous animals a vegan diet.
That isn’t evidence that the aforementioned cat food will cause cats to become malnourished. That’s just you speculating to confirm your existing biases.
I appreciate your comments here, even if the people you’re trying to educate completely ignore you and downvote you because they have no response to the fact that vegan cat food exists.
I’m not vegan, but the hysterical ignorance espoused in this comment section is bewildering.
Shitty McDonald’s burgers exist, it doesn’t mean they are healthy and safe to eat.
And humans weren’t made to eat tablets and get injected with mixtures from syringes.
IDK it seems like pretty clear human abuse to me
If medical drugs can be made to be safe and compatible with humans there’s nothing stopping it for the same happening for vegan food for cats
Your comment deserves more upvotes.
I think people are misunderstanding your comment as anti-science :(
No, people are down voting it for being a bad argument, because humans can in fact make the choice not to take those tablets or get those injections.
But these cats that are forced a vegan diet can’t.
Oh sure, they could choose to not eat, and die a bit faster than they would on the vegan food, but no animal will choose to ignore food when they are hungry.
humans can in fact make the choice not to take those tablets or get those injections
My infant child has less agency over what he eats than my pet dog. They both get vaccinated over vocal objection.
Humans do not, in fact, get to make these choices. Other, older, wiser humans routinely make these decisions on their behalf.
Cats don’t get to have a choice in a lot of things.
I fail to see how food would be the bad compared to sterilization, breeding, medical injections, outings and other things infringing on their autonomy.
Oh well…
I am not a vegan, but I do try to make food choices that are as ethical and healthy as I can… or at least as far as I can afford.
Cats are carnivores. Fact. This is not debatable. But I think you could also meet or exceed a cats nutritional needs from other sources. Whether those sources are readily available and whether a person is sufficiently meeting those needs… that’s another can of worms.
Generally, I’d argue that if you are hell-bent on a vegan diet, then you should not own carnivorous pets. No matter how well meaning you are, there is a significant chance that you will inflict harm on your pet, and that is unacceptable.
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 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’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.
All I’m getting from this entire saga is that vegans on here are lunatics. From forcing this nonsense on pets, to all of the follow-up, this is a very bad look for the community, from somone looking in from the outside.
This is some cultish behavior…
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 integrity in this post is off the charts.
Love to see it.
Thanks, we’re always trying to do better and learn from our mistakes.
As I got older, I realised that there were no real winners and there were no real losers…but there were victims and there were students
- Ren Gill
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.
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
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.
We don’t know if it’s bad for them therefore we shall feed our carnivorous animals tofu and beans.
Average vegan IQ moment
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
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.
Smort. Clearly ahead on the dunning kruger graph.
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.
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.
Wow. I have no involvement in the original issue and I’m definitely not as familiar with the circumstances and details as others. There may be a lot missing here.
But this feels like a very mature, logical, empathetic, well-intentioned response and the kind of thing I like to see.
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.
There could be a technical fix for this. Lemmy could use a system that requires certain moderator and/or admin actions to require a 2-person authorization, and temporarily put the action in an “under review” state for a set amount of time.
For instance, an admin removing content would replace it with a placeholder for up to 2 days. If another admin accepts the change then the comment is removed. If no other admin responds then the content is put back.
This is pretty much Change Management.
Would be fine as an option that could be enabled, especially for larger communities, but an instance run by a single person wouldn’t be able to host communities if it was a built in requirement for all communities.
Of course.
You can’t fix people problems with technical solutions. I know tech folk like to think they can, but it really doesn’t work. Sometimes you simple needs some rules, guides, and a good book to slap someone with.
Maybe not fix, but some things can certainly help.
Solid idea. One consequence of this would be the possible delay in removing material that really should be removed as fast as possible, though.
One person would be a good determiner of that.
Which is why the content would get masked until a 2nd person approves or it gets unmasked.
Right, but that content will still exist server side.
Change Management can account for that, but if it’s truely that big of a problem then there might be legal or other compelling reasons to keep the content server side and inaccessible.
In theory a good idea, but there is lots of content that needs to be gone serverside asap - either because it’s CP, otherwise illegal, spam that clogs down the Fediverse/can even be used to DoS a server,etc.
Illegal things probably need to be retained as evidence. It’s many times illegal to remove evidence if you think it’s possibly relevant.
I’m not a lawyer, but I’d consult one about this.
It depends very much on the legislation - in many legislations it is absolutely illegal to retain it.
Anyway, there are more than enough non-evidence class materials that need to be removed asap.
A slight modification, it could be implemented as a suggested action where the admins (or mods) can ask for a second opinion when they feel it’s appropriate.
That way urgent actions can happen right away, and potentially controversial actions can be discussed. It should solve the problem without forcing a specific workflow
I was just thinking about this: peer review admin actions. A first admin could initiate the action, then the peer review could be assigned randomly to another admin - randomly so that admins can’t create specific cartels to team up on specific topics.
Personally, I like this idea. But it can be equally abused if two admins colluded to agree with each other. But, I think it’s at least better than nothing.
I would imagine this would need to be done at the software level to be most effective. You should request this sort of feature from the Lemmy team to integrate into both the backend and the UI.
If you do create issues for this request, you should post back here (or whatever related community) so people can upvote the issues to show the devs we really want the feature.
More backstage work for admins who are NOT paid. No.
Upvoting and commenting for visibility, this is a great idea. Though concur with snooggums below that it would need to be an opt-in option.
I think a 3 person team is better. 1 mod/admit marks something for moderation. 2 other mods need to agree to mod. If 1 of the mods disagrees, it stays.
This is inspired by true events in September 1983, where a russian command post in charge of their nuclear weapons caught on radar 4 incoming missles, supposedly fired from America. The captain in charge turned his key to fire every nuke they had at America. The second in command turned his key as well. The third in command refused. His logic was if America was going to fire nukes, why fire exactly 4 nukes and only 4 nukes, all targeting the same location? Would it not make sense to deplay thousands if you’re trying for a surprise ambush?
Those nukes that America fired? Clouds. The Earth was at just the right rotation for 30 minutes to confuse the russian radar into interpreting 4 missle shaped clouds as solid objects.
America was almost turned to dust for no reason, 2 weeks before I was born. Because of some happy fluffy white clouds, that even Bob Ross will admit almost DID cause an accident!
So yeah. Maybe we do a 3 mod system.
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This reads like more misinformation so I had to look it up. I’m seeing that it was one person that made this decision.
I’m replying to someone suggesting that in the future it should be a 2 man process. I’m suggesting it be a 3 man process. Nobody is suggesting this already happened.
I mean it could be granular like with 2 up to all admins.
We’re not dealing with nukes.
But any standard change management process can do that. I don’t think 3 people need to be involved in most matters.
Well, on the Internet, damage to reputation might be irreversible, but damage to content won’t.
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.
Animal abuse isn’t an opinion. It’s evil. And malice by ignorance that could be corrected is malice.
Stop apologizing for doing your jobs. We all have opinions and raise them loudly in the Fediverse so I understand your natural reaction and want to communicate well. But IMHO this is troll feeding. If they posted in favor of human genocide, you’d close a ticket, and move on, not write an apology for taking it down.
Good news, thanks for the open communication.
You’re welcome!✌️❤️ We try and be easy to get a hold of as well.
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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.
