Hey all,
In light of recent events concerning one of our communities (/c/vegan), we (as a team) have spent the last week working on how to address better some concerns that had arisen between the moderators of that community and the site admin team. We always strive to find a balance between the free expression of communities hosted here and protecting users from potentially harmful content.
We as a team try to stick to a general rule of respect and consideration for the physical and mental well-being of our users when drafting new rules and revising existing ones. Furthermore, we’ve done our best to try to codify these core beliefs into the additions to the ToS and a new by-laws section.
ToS Additions
That being said, we will be adding a new section to our “terms of service” concerning misinformation. While we do try to be as exact as reasonably able, we also understand that rules can be up to interpretation as well. This is a living document, and users are free to respectfully disagree. We as site admins will do our best to consider the recommendations of all users regarding potentially revising any rules.
Regarding misinformation, we’ve tried our best to capture these main ideas, which we believe are very reasonable:
- Users are encouraged to post information they believe is true and helpful.
- We recommend users conduct thorough research using reputable scientific sources.
- When in doubt, a policy of “Do No Harm”, based on the Hippocratic Oath, is a good compass on what is okay to post.
- Health-related information should ideally be from peer-reviewed, reproducible scientific studies.
- Single studies may be valid, but often provide inadequate sample sizes for health-related advice.
- Non-peer-reviewed studies by individuals are not considered safe for health matters.
We reserve the right to remove information that could cause imminent physical harm to any living being. This includes topics like conversion therapy, unhealthy diets, and dangerous medical procedures. Information that could result in imminent physical harm to property or other living beings may also be removed.
We know some folks who are free speech absolutists may disagree with this stance, but we need to look out for both the individuals who use this site and for the site itself.
By-laws Addition
We’ve also added a new by-laws section as well as a result of this incident. This new section is to better codify the course of action that should be taken by site and community moderators when resolving conflict on the site, and also how to deal with dormant communities.
This new section provides also provides a course of action for resolving conflict with site admin staff, should it arise. We want both the users and moderators here to feel like they have a voice that is heard, and essentially a contact point that they can feel safe going to, to “talk to the manager” type situation, more or less a new Lemmy.World HR department that we’ve created as a result of what has happened over the last week.
Please feel free to raise any questions in this thread. We encourage everyone to please take the time to read over these new additions detailing YOUR rights and how we hope to better protect everyone here.
https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/#80-misinformation
https://legal.lemmy.world/bylaws/
Sincerely,
FHF / LemmyWorld Operations Team
EDIT:
We will be releasing a separate post regarding the moderation incident in the next 24-48 hours, just getting final approval from the team.
EDIT 2 (2024-08-31):
We’ve posted a response, sorry for the delay.
👉 https://lemmy.world/post/19264848 👈
Any chance the relevant incident could be unpacked and used as a demonstration of how these changes would alter the outcome or encourage a different outcome?
As someone who only saw pieces of it after the fact, I am potentially in the dark here about the purposes and context of these changes.
That being said, from what I did see, it seemed very much like an instance admin imposing themselves and their superior power on a community when there were probably plenty of other more subtle action that could have been taken, where subtlety becomes vital for any issue complex and nuanced enough to be handled remotely well. I’m not sure I’m seeing any awareness of this in this post and the links provided.
For instance, AFAICT, the “incident” involved a discussion of if or how a domestic cat could eat a vegan diet. Obviously that’s not trivial as they, like humans, have some necessary nutrients, and AFAICT the vegans involved were talking about how it could be done, while the admin involved was basically having none of that and removed content on the basis that it would lead to a cat dying.
And then in the misinformation link we have:
We also reserve the right to remove any sufficiently scientifically proven MALICIOUS information posted which a user may follow, which would result in either IMMINENT PHYSICAL harm to an INDIVIDUALS PROPERTY, the PROPERTY of OTHERS or OTHER LIVING BEINGS.
In the context of cats and their food … which “living beings” are being harmed and who is encouraging or discouraging this harm?
Whether you’re vegan or not, this seems to me formally ambiguous and on the face of it only enshrines the source of the conflict rather than facilitating better forms of communication or resolution (perhaps there are things in the by-laws I’ve missed??).
Two groups can have exactly the same aim and core values (reduce harm to living beings) but in the complexity of the issue come to issue a bunch of friendly fire … that’s how complex issues work.
So, back to my original question … how exactly would things be done better?
Hi there, totally in the dark here. What was the incident?
Vegans saying that cats, which are obligate carnivores, can subsist on a vegan diet; admin removed it as misinformation. The vegan community then threw a fit over it.
Saying others are 100% wrong when there are scientific research that supports that cats can eat a plant-based diet with synthetic taurine, b12 and minerals is not very wise. It’s sound like a big false gotcha for a group society is biased against.
Sources:
-https://sustainablepetfood.info/
-https://www.magonlinelibrary.com/doi/abs/10.12968/vetn.2022.13.6.252
-https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0253292
-https://www.mdpi.com/2306-7381/10/1/52
-https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0284132
-https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240584402411609X
-https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/6/9/57
God damn. So that means theres a whole community of people whos cats are living their worst life, because some asshole adopted them and feels self rightous.
And those are the ones who set a bad example for vegans. I’m sure there are mild mannered non-asshole vegans out there. I’d even believe they were a silent majority. But MY interactions with vegans are always the loud pushy types who try to make you feel that YOU need to follow THEIR choices.
And to that type of person, I actually have an endless supply of middle fingers and a chronic drought of fucks to give. I tell them I’m going to eat THREE cheeseburgers now. One for the cheeseburger I was already going to eat. One for the cheeseburger they’re NOT eating, and one more just to make their veganism a net loss. Since I’d only be eating just the one if they weren’t getting in my face about being vegan.
people say stereotypes are damaging but I have literally never met a vegan IRL that was a decent person.
I know plenty.
The thing is, the ones you meet actively, as in, they make being a vegan a significant portion of their exterior presentation and lifestyle, they’re usually off the deep end, independent of being vegan.
You can see the exact same behaviour - just not about veganism - in modern alt right counterculture, religious fascists, etc. It’s always about pushing a narrative and a believe system, the specific system is almost irrelevant.
But OTOH, veganism without making it a religious cult is almost normal at this point, which is also why you would not actively notice it a lot. There’s nothing to actively notice, really.
It’s just the crazy people that make it weird, and then end up torturing dependent animals and stuff.
‘No True Scotsman’…
I think you misunderstand the argumentative fallacy there. Unless you mean that someone who isn’t pushing agenda is no true scotsman? Then that’s correctly used, but also the inverse of what I am saying.
(edit)
Aaah, nevermind. I see what you mean, I could have worded that better. It wasn’t meant as exclusionism, rather that of any subgroup, the part that does X, but is self-reflective about it and accepting of disparate opinions is not going to be remotely as visible, and hence by and large, you won’t notice that part actively.
This of how little you notice most catholics in daily life. I doubt you associate “is a catholic” with most people you interact with who are. You would not even think about assigning such a label, no matter which way.The people you associate with such an attribute are the ones that constantly push this attribute themselves, lacking the ability to reflect how this appears to others and alienates them. And it’s this very mental inability to consider a perspective of others that would also make you, say, feed your cat a vegan diet as a vegan out the inability to reflect that while for humans a vegan diet might be the correct choice (and even then there are exceptions of course) but this does not mean you can extend this to cats, unless the cats as a society decide this of their own. It’s their decision to make.
But it’s also exactly this kind of person where you remember that specific attribute. “Is strictly catholic”, “is vegan and nothing else it seems”, “exists only as an extra to their car”, etc etc.
Yikes
Yeah, they’re 100% in the wrong here. Cats aren’t people, they can’t consent to your personal code of ethics. They’re meat-eaters by nature, and denying them of that is animal abuse. Good intentions don’t override your pet’s nutritional needs. Admins are right to remove any content that encourages animal abuse.
How to not be taken serious by people - Vegan cat abusers edition
I’m glad to see site-wide action taken against the spread of harmful disinformation.
