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
Are we not? Because beef goes into cat food. If people are calling others animal abusers, and their solution involves abusing different animals, then I think that’s relevant to the discussion. But if you want to keep it just about cats, ok, we can take cat food off the table and discuss the ethics of killing some cats to feed others.
Then you’ve learned something new today, and you’re welcome.
Your logic is impeccable. There are always some unscrupulous farmers but you say they are all of them. That indeed ends this conversation
Unscrupulous? It’s totally legal, at least in the US. Actually, looking it up, it seems to be illegal in Canada, which might be why you haven’t heard of the practice, it’s quite common here in the states. As the article states, the FDA estimates 1 to 2 million tons of “poultry litter” are fed to cows annually. If you want to call US cattle ranchers unscrupulous, well, I certainly wouldn’t disagree with you, but it’s not like they’re hiding it or anything.
Americans still belive that USA is everywhere. Greetings from Europe and luckily lots of your food is banned. And besides I’m wondering how american farmers feed cows with the feces. Cows after all are not that stupid and they would rather graze the grass
Hi, Europe! Four years ago, Denmark systematically killed 2.84 minks for every one person living in Denmark.
Oh, and how’s that whole banning live exports thing going? Not at all? Cool!
How is it connected with vegan diet for cats or let’s be laxed - feces in cows feed. I wish to know
Just clarifying that animal agriculture in Europe still represents unthinkable cruelty on an unimaginable scale even if specific practices are outlawed there.
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/banking-fintech/banned-substances_study-finds-pesticide-residues-in-93-of-organic-swiss-farms/44878988
Very bio organic crops.
Pesticides and fertilizers without which modern agriculture cannot work (we wouldn’t be able to feed the current population) poisons whole ecosystems, people (around 200 000 people yearly https://swiss-food.ch/en/articles/jährlich-über-200000-tote-wegen-pestizid-vergiftungen )
Is it more “human”. I met people who suffer diseases exactly because of this - no compensation at all, it’s very hard to prove by the level required in court rooms
I won’t even start mentioning how many small mammals, rodents and birds and bees get killed because of modern agriculture.
Do you still feel yourself morally superior?
I stg y’all are just ridiculous. Let me explain this at a very, very basic level.
When you eat animals, those animals either ate a bunch of plants, or they at a bunch of other animals who, if you go down the food chain, ate a bunch of plants. It requires more plants to be grown to provide someone the nutrition they need through meat than it does if they ate the plants directly. That means that pointing out that harm is caused by the production of plants is just another reason to go vegan.
Since you’re very definitely arguing in good faith and not just trying to use whatever bullshit you can as a gotcha, I’m sure that you’ll realize now that the best way to address your concerns about pesticides and fertilizers is to go vegan, thereby reducing the amount of them that are needed. Or, coming back down to planet earth, you’ll seamlessly move on to the next talking point, abandoning this tact the moment you realize it doesn’t actually support your position.
Just because certain practices aren’t universal doesn’t mean that they’re irrelevant to the discussion. I brought it up because it’s a particularly on point example of the double standard of what people consider to be animal abuse - feeding cats vegan cat food is abuse, but feeding cows poop isn’t, somehow.
My general point is that it’s hypocritical to call something animal abuse when the proposed alternative involves abuse towards other animals, and that point stands regardless of that particular example only being relevant in the US.