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
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.
IDK it seems like pretty clear animal abuse to me
Cats are obligate carnivores. It is 100% animal abuse.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
*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.
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].
…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.
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
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.”
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
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.
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
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
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…
Your comment deserves more upvotes.
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.
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.
Is domestication 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.
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.
Thank you for sharing this. People need to learn more about this topic before they speak like armchair nutrition experts.
“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
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.
“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.
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.
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.
Good news, thanks for the open communication.
You’re welcome!✌️❤️ We try and be easy to get a hold of as well.
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.
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 :)
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
More backstage work for admins who are NOT paid. No.
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.
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.
deleted by creator
Solid idea. One consequence of this would be the possible delay in removing material that really should be removed as fast as possible, though.
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.
One person would be a good determiner of that.
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.
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.
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?
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.
We’re not talking about cows - don’t change topic please. I never heard of such thing even though I used to live countryside and have farmers in family
We’re not talking about cows - don’t change topic please.
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.
I never heard of such thing even though I used to live countryside and have farmers in family
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
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.
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.
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 ✌️
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
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.
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/
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.
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.
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
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.
Let’s see it.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0253292
here is one study.
let me know what you think
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.
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.
