In my view as a long-time moderator, the purpose of moderation is conflict resolution and ensuring the sitewide rules are followed. As reported today by !vegan@lemmyworld, moderator Rooki’s vision appears to be that their personal disagreement with someone else’s position takes priority over the rules and is enough to remove comments in a community they don’t moderate, remove its moderators for the comments, and effectively resort to hostile takeover by posting their own comment with an opposing view (archived here) and elevating it for visiblity.
The removed comments relate to vegan cat food. As seen in the modlog, Rooki removed a number of pretty balanced comments explaining that while there are problematic ways to feed cats vegan, if done properly, cats can live on vegan cat food. Though it is a controversial position even among vegans, there is scientific research supporting it, like this review from 2023 or the papers co-authored by professor Andrew Knight. These short videos could also work as a TL;DR of his knowledge on the matter. As noted on Wikipedia, some of the biggest animal advocacy organizations support the notion of vegan cat food, while others do not. Vegan pet food brands, including Ami, Evolution Diet, and Benevo have existed for years and are available throughout the world, clearly not prohibited by law in countries with laws against animal abuse.
To summarize, even if you don’t agree with the position of vegan cat food being feasible, at the very least you have to acknowledge that the matter is not clear-cut. Moreover, there is no rule of lemmy.world that prohibits those types of conversations unless making a huge stretch to claim that it falls under violent content “promoting animal abuse” in the context of “excessive gore” and “dismemberment”.
For the sake of the argument, even if we assume that the truth is fully on Rooki’s side and discussions of vegan cat food is “being a troll and promoting killing pets”, the sitewide rules would have to be updated to reflect this view, and create a dangerous precedent, enabling banning for making positive comments about junk food (killing yourself), being parents who smoke (killing your kids), being religious “because it’s not scientific” and so on. Even reddit wouldn’t go that far, and there are plenty of conversations on vegan cat food on reddit.
Given Rooki’s behavior and that it has already resulted in forcing the vegan community out of lemmy.world and with more likely to follow, I believe the only right course of action is to remove them as a moderator to help restore the community’s trust in the platform and reduce the likelihood of similar events in the future.
What is with this? Why can’t people be level headed and chill? Good god, people need to seriously touch some grass.
What the fuck is “vegan cat food”? I sometimes can’t understand people.
Ok. I get it. As people, we are bad. We mass husbandry just for food, modifying them with artificial selection for productivity. So I can understand veganism (although I am not vegan).
But have we really reached the point where we stop animals from eating meat? Either I’m a bigoted idiot or people are out of their minds.
Nobody is suggesting to stop animals in the wild eating meat or for incidental kills our furry companions make. Animals eat meat. It’s natural. We breed animals as pets and feed them industrial amounts of food each year that we produce from other animals in very questionable ways. Not natural. The entire planet benefits from less meat being mass produced. It’s not crazy to entertain some ideas that get us closer if they’re proven equally nutritional.
Then we should be against pets too. If we are not okay to breeding animals, we should also discuss pets too. That’s not natural either.
I’m not against befriending animals but breeding animals is shit.
There are vegans that think of pets as an abuse. I think the pet industry with breeders is abusive but making friends with an animal is mutually beneficial.
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For me, the purpose of the post is exactly what it asks for. I don’t think I’ve ever posted to !vegan except for today, to cross-post the OP, but my own fate as an active lemmy.world user likely rests on the outcome of this request. I run a tiny community that has no relation to animal rights or ethics but I feel it is absolutely threatened when there are moderators like Rooki that act based on their views rather than the rules.
That vegan community has a rule against misinformation. The idea that a cat is perfectly healthy on a vegan diet is misinformation. You feel threatened by mods like Rooki who act based on rules rather than your views. You’d rather mistreat animals than admit that anything any vegan has ever said ever might be wrong, and not allow anyone to point out that your wrong
Idk, but I personally think there doesn’t have to be a rule that explicitly states “don’t hand out misinformation that will cause animals pain”
like, if someone told someone else that “drinking polonium cures depression” we would also want that person banned, even if there isn’t a rule explicitly against it.
People are out of their minds. It’s a cult. Thankfully, mostly constrained to the west.
It is about pets, which are domestic animals who eat what you feed them. Choosing brand X of pet food prevents your pet from eating brand Y, I suppose, but every pet owner has to make such choices. Plant-based diets start to look like just another choice.
You really can’t stop cats from eating meat anyway, especially if you ever let them outside. They love to catch and eat mice, birds, and bugs, and they will do it no matter what pet food you might also give them.
I wonder if we feed our animals with “vegan food” for a year, would they start to choose that instead of meat or meat based food?
Don’t know about cats, but can answer from dog perspective - I imagine it might apply to cats as well. And this is a completely utilitarian answer: food alergies. Animals can have them.
We have a dog who is alergic to most if not all most common meat proteins - chicken, pork, beef, fish… didn’t test all but you (and we) get the picture. Luckily, there are less common meat proteins (venison as one example) which he accepts just fine - but there was a distinct possibility he would not. So we would be faced with two options - buy him super expensive, ultra processed analergic food, or go for vegan options. If faced with this decision, I’d opt for option B for sure.
I know cats are seen as true carnivores and dogs are omnivores, but I think it applies to your question
That is not correct from a cat perspective. Dogs are not obligate carnivores. Cats are. What this means is that the amino acids that cats can’t produce on their own are only available naturally from other animals. The amino acids that dogs don’t produce on their own are available from vegan sources.
And I clarified this. OP asked about animals, I have experience with dogs and acknowledged cats are different.
But I can imagine cats having similar conditions. There are always outliers and sometimes you have to do unconventional things.
Hi all,
For the sake of transparency, we are responding here, as remaining silent will also send a message to the community. We are actively reviewing all the information posted in this thread and all other linked sources. The entire team is being brought up to speed on the events that have taken place, but this process may take some time. We are all in different time zones, and many of us have professional and personal obligations that may take priority. Please bear with us, as there is a lot to review. We promise that after our review, we will respond to the community.
Thank you.
The FHF / LW Admin Team
Any updates or this more of a week to month wait?
Looking at the modlog, Rooki reinstated the two !vegan moderators and restored one of the mods’ comments about an hour ago. Rooki also edited their own comment referenced in the OP to say the following:
Edit: I am sorry, about my emotional decision i reinstated @Eevoltic and @naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com as mods After researching myself, many sites say its not healthy, one (1) research paper says it is at least NOT unhealthy, but it has few points of data.
Personally, I’m not fully satisfied if that is the end of it. The changes look like Rooki admitting that the issue is not clear-cut, but Rooki’s conduct as a moderator has to reflect the rules, not something as arbitrary as Rooki’s level of disagreement with someone’s views at the given time.
Nobody should have to convince Rooki that something is not misinformation. Rooki (or any other instance moderator) must not even think of interfering on that basis. The word “misinformation” is not in the rules in any shape or form, and the only thing remotely close to it is Lemmy.World accepting that “The content provided on Lemmy.World is not necessarily factually true”. If anything, the rules side more with the community moderators’ judgement by saying “Your participation in individual communities will only be acceptable on the condition that you abide by their rules.”
Edit: Added more to the sentence on Lemmy.World’s rule related to misinformation.
More than I expected. Still wonder if they’ll actually say something
Is this all over a disagreement on whether a cat can survive on a vegan diet?
Yes, i wouldnt even stepped in if they didnt removed / added a warning about the risks of a vegan diet.
As a “clean” vegan diet without anything added to the food is poison for the cat as they are “Obligatory Carnivore” and need some Animal Proteins.
They wouldnt die immediatly but will cause malnutrition.
Technically it’s not proteins, but specific amino acids (which, yes, are the building blocks of proteins). And amino acid deficiencies will absolutely kill cats. Many years ago my parents used to buy the cheapest garbage cat food available at the local grocery store. It was nutritionally deficient, and ended up killing our only cat that was strictly an indoor cat at the time. (I don’t allow any of my cats outside, because I don’t want them to be food for owls and coyotes.)
That is my understanding based on Rooki’s own post, the post of the demoted vegan mod, and the modlog containing the removed comments.
I’m just here for the comments.
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I’m much uglier than that.
Stop whining that people don’t approve of you abusing your pets. Rooki did nothing wrong, they’re just fighting vegan disinformation that harms pets
I fully support an admin stepping in to stop poorly researched pseudo science with an aura of fake legitimacy to be spread on Lemmy as a whole although I don’t use (dot)World I still see your shit on my feed
I haven’t looked into this (nor will I), but if the situation is as described, I support revoking mod access. Let’s not discuss veganism, pet food, or other off-topic issues. The discussion is about mod behavior on Lemmy. If anyone wants to check user Rose’s claims and show up with receipts, that’d be appreciated, I think, by all.
This seems to be a situation where an instance admin (not a community moderator) stepped into a community (!vegan@lemmy.world), removed a bunch of “disinformation” comments, and de-modded some moderators who were letting the “disinformation” by. At issue was whether it is safe to feed cats a vegan diet. I did have to look into veganism and pet food to make sense of that. If there is universal agreement among scientists, veterinarians, and non-crazy vegans that any cat put on a vegan diet dies within 3 months, that’s one thing, but the actual situation doesn’t seem that severe. Rooki also seems to use non-standard terminology and incomplete descriptions in communicating their side of the issue.
Wikipedia’s obligate carnivore section says (emphasis added):
Obligate or “true” carnivores are those whose diet requires nutrients found only in animal flesh in the wild… All wild felids, including feral domestic cats, require a diet of primarily animal flesh and organs… In captivity or domestic settings, obligate carnivores like cats and crocodiles can in principle get all their required nutrients from processed food made from plant and synthetic sources.[4][5]
Reference 4 above is a Guardian article titled Cats may get health benefits from vegan diet, study suggests and subtitled “Owners who fed their pet a plant-based diet reported fewer visits to the vet and less medication use”.
Rooki uses the term “obligatory carnivore” (instead of the usual “obligate”) and omits that the definition describes the diet only of wild animals, not captive ones. So Rooki’s familiarity with this topic seems limited, and yet they use their admin flag to shut down discussion doesn’t fit their opinion. Wikipedia’s eponym for this type of participant is “Randy in Boise.”
If this were a dispute between !vegan mods then that would be regular mod drama, but this seems to be from outside the community, not good. While Reddit often has bad moderators on large subs, one of its attractions to many users is unless you’re discussing criminal or near-criminal conduct, you can generally start your own sub and moderate it however you want, with the admins staying out of your hair. The times they banned some subs that didn’t reach that level created significant controversy even by non-supporters of those subs. If Lemmy is trying to present itself as an attractive alternative to Reddit, it should also take a light hand with internal community matters.
Overall I think it is best that instance admins stop interfering with discussions inside communities, unless there are serious conflicts with site policy. Could we imagine lemmy.world defederating another instance because its vegan community had a comment subthread about feeding a plant diet to your cat? Maybe so, but that doesn’t speak well of lemmy.world, imho. Alternatively, if such discussions get shut down on lemmy.world but wouldn’t get a different instance defederated, then lemmy.world stops being the “generic Lemmy server for everyone to use” that it advertises itself as. So it should leave those discussions alone, both on the local instance and on remote ones.
I won’t weigh in on the request for Rooki’s removal but I’d want Rooki and other admins to step away from this type of action, and I’d want the site poilcy (written or unwritten) to generally embrace this non-interference principle.
WP:UNINVOLVED is an internal Wikipedia policy about admin actions and as such, doesn’t directly apply here, but it is something to consider in deciding how best to handle these issues.
What the hell. There’s just a disagreement, no need to use admin override powers. Just let it be. Let them have their sub. It’s not like they’re recruiting for Al Qaeda.
I really don’t give a damn about this particular fight about cat food. But I do worry about admins or mods who can’t sometimes just let something slide. Like cops always looking to escalate
While I agree that the behavior was problematic, I personally think a mature apology and acknowledgement that the science is not necessarily on his side would be a sufficient resolution, if it was offered openly and willingly.
Animal welfare is an understandably passionate topic, so I can empathize with a person’s feelings leading them to decide that what they were doing was necessary to protect the animals that they care about. Because the fundamental motive was a positive one, and only the chosen expression of this motive was poor conduct, I think redemption is a potentially viable path forward that may be preferable to harsher consequences. We could see this as an educational and growing opportunity, if we wished, and forgiveness has merits of its own when there is no genuine malice present.
I should probably disclose that I am not a member of that community, so I personally was not impacted by these actions and may be underestimating just how badly people feel about this all. Being myself an active carnivore that has been vegetarian in the past (well, pescatarian tbf) and having experience with both schools of thought though, I do feel like I can appreciate the thought-patterns that led both sides to their chosen actions.
When it comes to disagreements of that nature (and again, even if we assume that the science were on Rooki’s side), the right course of action in my view is to make an opposing comment and make your case, then if that’s unfairly removed by the community mods, create your own community (it could be another version of vegan or “anti-vegan” depending on where you stand) and use that to express the opposing views. Resorting to your admin power is completely unacceptable for a case of disagreement that is not related to a rules violation.
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