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.
You’re right, I introduced the pet ownership angle. I think it would be hard to argue that owning a pet does not involve you overriding their choices. Letting your pet do whatever they want-- the opposite of training them-- is in fact generally considered poor pet ownership. I think there’s a deep and unexplored conversation to be had about the ethics of pet ownership, but mostly I just wanted to point out that making decisions for your pet that they would not have made (for example, not letting your dog run into dangerous areas, keeping a cat inside, or preventing your pet from attacking other small animals) is not in itself animal abuse like you’ve said. It becomes abuse when your decisions or choices harm the animal more than they help it (ie. choosing to malnourish your cat by feeding them a vegan diet instead of meat).
TL;DR: Pet ownership necessarily means you’re making decisions for your pet, not all of which they would choose themselves, so claiming that doing that is immoral means pet ownership would be immoral. Since I think we agree that pet ownership is not immoral, making decisions for your pet must not always be immoral-- it’s only immoral when the decisions harm your pet.
And lastly, no, I don’t have an agenda. I’m not vegan and I don’t own any pets. Please don’t accuse people of acting in bad faith if you’re not absolutely sure that it’s true. I’m just being annoying here because I’m interested in this subject from a purely theoretical angle.
Ok, valid point.
My cats are free to leave. They can walk away and never come back any time they choose. They choose to come back. They choose to sleep on the couch, or in the bed we put on the landing on the stairs, or in the cardboard box houses my daughter made and put on the table in front of the window where they can watch the birds. They occasionally choose to eat a snake or mouse that they caught but mostly eat the expensive kibble we provide. They get pets and scratches and medical care when they need it.
Have you ever tried to train a cat?
Our chickens are the same. I let them out in the morning and they come back at night. They could leave and there would be nothing that I could do about it but they don’t.
The argument sort of falls apart in the face of reality.
Are your pets vaccinated and fixed? Would they have ever chosen that themselves? Do you get their dental work done (something most vets only do under anesthesia because cats hate it so much!)? If you’re responsibly taking care of your pets, you are making choices for them they do not like.
Spaying/neutering and vaccinating your pet is responsible pet ownership as is feeding them a diet appropriate to their needs and evolution. A vegan diet is inappropriate for an obligate or facultative carnivore.
The choice argument is silly at I’ve said elsewhere in this conversation. It only works on those who believe that they are absolutely morally superior, like vegan extremists, because taking the choice away from another being shatters that bubble of self-delusionional superiority.