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 am not a vegan, but I do try to make food choices that are as ethical and healthy as I can… or at least as far as I can afford.
Cats are carnivores. Fact. This is not debatable. But I think you could also meet or exceed a cats nutritional needs from other sources. Whether those sources are readily available and whether a person is sufficiently meeting those needs… that’s another can of worms.
Generally, I’d argue that if you are hell-bent on a vegan diet, then you should not own carnivorous pets. No matter how well meaning you are, there is a significant chance that you will inflict harm on your pet, and that is unacceptable.
You’re forgetting some people are idiots, especially those “better than others” who do crap like this.
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.
All I’m getting from this entire saga is that vegans on here are lunatics. From forcing this nonsense on pets, to all of the follow-up, this is a very bad look for the community, from somone looking in from the outside.
This is some cultish behavior…
Vegans are fine, it are those that enforce/demand it from others that are radicals, all radicals are lunatics.
meat eaters are fine. it’s just those that enforce and demand it from others.
Are they in the room with you right now?
yes. spewing their toxic meat identifying propaganda!
Only joking. some of my best friends pay people to kill animals for them.
Im no vegan, and was originally convinced that giving cats vegan food was animal abuse, and am still sure its best for cats to eat meat But really, seeing so much people just saying ‘vegans are hysteric/lunatic/cultist’ without any more reflection gave me a weird vibe, like it’s the exact same rethoric used against any progressist idea It got me thinking, like I think I disagree with vegans on the vegan cat food thing but people are being so mean to vegans and tolerant to power abuse, i’d rather be on the vegan side
my only argument for the vegan food is this: if the cat enjoys the food and it provides all the nutrients then what is the issue?
No one is suggesting we force feed cats wall paper paste.
You get that from anywhere with a chamber that echos well enough. There’s the folks who don’t have kids or want them, and then there’s the anti-natalists who call the people who have children breeders and their kids crotchspawn. There’s the Christians and the Religious Right. Jews and Zionists. List goes on.
don’t for get the toxic masculinity style meat eaters!
Not sure how thats relevant to my comment. Are you sure you’re replying to the right person?
some people eat meat. some people make it part of their core identity. it’s funny.
Says the guy who’s entire comment history is identifing by what they eat.
no you!
Very mature
I haven’t seen echo chambers for the “Bacon is my personality” guys at all, while all the others mentioned are definitely things that exist.
Caring about animal abuse is cultish behavior?
No. Caring about animal welfare and refusing to support the industrial farming complex is noble and admirable.
Trying to force your diet and ideas onto animals that cannot object is fucked up.
If you can’t feed your pet a proper diet do not get a pet.
If you haven’t done the smallest iota of research into what vegan pet foods entail, declaring them an improper diet as a knee jerk reaction is, quite frankly, not a good look for you.
So far the only “research” shared on this thread has been a marketing blurb from a manufacturer who makes this stuff.
Not sure the people arguing for this are able to actually conduct research, let alone post about it in an intelligent way.
Considering all the links posted in the last circlejerk thread were dismissed out of hand as “pro vegan” I’m not surprised nobody is wasting their time here.
Not sure the people arguing against this are aware how much corn, rice, soy, and supplemental taurine is in the meat based foods they give their cats already anyway, so it hardly seems worthwhile to go back to square one every fifth post.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YxjGa0MXfAc
Let me know which parts you disagree with.
yeah. downvote a video of a guy presenting work in the field.
cats are quite capable of leaving if they are not getting food they enjoy.
absolutely fucking insane - imagine suggesting a pet could “leave if they don’t like it” for any other form of animal abuse.
Insane, unless you have ever had a semi feral cat.
Removed by mod
You missed the point of the post.
This goes beyond the c/vegan issue; it is addressing systematic lemmy issues between admins, moderators, and users.
You know this whole thread is batshit insane when jimmydoreisalefty is actually speaking words of reason.
As one of the biggest shitposters on Lemmy, maybe you wanna sit this one out?
That’s pug Jesus. Although anyone thinking Jimmy dore is a leffy is a fucking idiot
This isn’t about catfood, it’s about moderation.
This is not the topic at hand
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.
Of course we do. Let’s feed poor animals unnatural food, because we are idiots who overconsume.
unnatural food
My brother in Christ, how do you think normal kibble is made?
Who says that is natural food?
Disagreeing = ignorance.
Sounds like a person who’s open to a reasonable discussion lol.
Don’t be sorry about the cats, be sorry you missed the main topic of the post.
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.
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.
It’s not just a diet thing, it’s a matter of animal abuse.
I don’t doubt that there are options out there for people that want to feed their pets a vegan-friendly diet, but given that cats primarily eat meat the idea of promoting a vegan diet that isn’t heavily monitored and noted by their vet is an awful look for the vegan community and Lemmy. You absolutely cannot expect people to just treat this as a moderation issue, because at its most fundamental level it’s about whether lemmy.world supports content that is harmful to animals.
I said it elsewhere here, and since people don’t like it being raised I’ll say it again: shit like this wouldn’t fly on Reddit. Lemmy has a poor reputation on the Fediverse for housing extreme opinions, and this debacle really won’t help its reputation as a fed-friendly alternative to Reddit. Saying “go back to Reddit” just highlights the problem more, and is probably why there are plenty of posts on the Fediverse asking why Lemmy is so hostile, or why it’s nowhere near as friendly as many communities on Mastodon.
Here’s an idea, why don’t you save your argument for one of the myriad posts that have popped up discussing this very subject of whether or not cats can eat vegan or not and whether or not that is abuse.
But here and now within this post is a discussion over whether or not mods acted recklessly and whether or not there is a need for better guidelines on what is and isn’t allowed. Which were discussed in the post that you apparently didn’t read.
At no point did the author of this post open up the floor to discuss whether or not veganism is good, bad, or ugly for cats.
Telling people what to say and where, very reddit of you.
You could have just ignored the post and move on guy.
Oh no you have turned the tables on me! 😱
My words are meaningless now!!!
Maybe.
Here’s an idea, why don’t you save your argument for one of the myriad posts that have popped up discussing this very subject of whether or not this is the right forum to discuss this.
At no point did I open up the floor to discuss whether or not your stance is good, bad, or ugly. I only talked about your delivery.
Because the question at the time wasn’t does lemmy.world support potential animal abuse. Whether it is or isn’t isn’t really the topic here, but if one side feels strongly against the potential for abuse, there’s a question regarding lax moderation and what an instance supports.
Again, it’s not a great look for a community that isn’t looked upon favourably across the fediverse. Again, I’m sure it is possible that someone has created a vegan-friendly brand of cat food, but you have to assume that the topic of potential abuse will come up. Is an online forum the appropriate place to be giving what could be harmful advice that could endanger an animal if the wrong brand is pushed?
go back to fucking reddit
Yeah, fuck reddit, and fuck u/spez.
Er, am I doing this right?
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.
Difficulty level of Reddit is too high, since people would actually need to, you know, read stuff, in order to have “read it.”
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.
Animal abuse isn’t an opinion. It’s evil. And malice by ignorance that could be corrected is malice.
Stop apologizing for doing your jobs. We all have opinions and raise them loudly in the Fediverse so I understand your natural reaction and want to communicate well. But IMHO this is troll feeding. If they posted in favor of human genocide, you’d close a ticket, and move on, not write an apology for taking it down.
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.
Just because the company making money off of purchasers says it’s good for cats. Doesn’t mean it’s good for cats. Other than one study that relied on surveyed answers from vegan pet owners, I haven’t seen any evidence that a vegan diet is safe for cats.
It’s still forcing YOUR diet on a helpless animal. They eat meat.
End of story.
The integrity in this post is off the charts.
Love to see it.
Thanks, we’re always trying to do better and learn from our mistakes.
As I got older, I realised that there were no real winners and there were no real losers…but there were victims and there were students
- Ren Gill
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.
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.
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.
Mods aside, the Reddit app is still garbage
😂👍
You’re beating a dead horse here. The most common association with that app is “barfing a little bit before deleting it”.
Feeding a carnivore a vegan diet indeed is animal abuse. Cats can survive, but survival and healthy are not the same. Cats on a vegan diet get sick much faster and die younger, statistically according to vets. I’m a vegan, I have cats, I feed them meat. If you don’t like feeding your pets meat, get a herbivore pet instead.
The way things were handled may have been wrong, but animal abuse should be banned from Lemmy imo.
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.
We’re just trying to do the best we can to consider everyone involved and what we can do better going forward. We’re all just volunteers trying to keep things positive and stable. 🙏 ❤️
Thanks!
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.
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.
In theory a good idea, but there is lots of content that needs to be gone serverside asap - either because it’s CP, otherwise illegal, spam that clogs down the Fediverse/can even be used to DoS a server,etc.
Illegal things probably need to be retained as evidence. It’s many times illegal to remove evidence if you think it’s possibly relevant.
I’m not a lawyer, but I’d consult one about this.
It depends very much on the legislation - in many legislations it is absolutely illegal to retain it.
Anyway, there are more than enough non-evidence class materials that need to be removed asap.
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.
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.
More backstage work for admins who are NOT paid. No.
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.
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 ✌️
I don’t agree with the outcome of THIS situation, but I DO agree with the idea that mods and admins are not gods on the fediverse. I like the concept of checks and balances, even if I disagree with the ruling. The fact that it’s not a god complex one person rule is better than what reddit has.
That being said, you can be vegan, but give your cat some chicken! Cats LOVE chicken! Why would you want to deprive your cat of what they love? If they were neighborhood cats, they would instinctually be killing birds ALL THE TIME!!! So it’s not YOU killing the chicken. It’s your cat. Don’t like it? Don’t get a cat.
I don’t get a dog. Why? Because I’m never home. That would be unfair for a dog to just NEVER get to go for a walk, just because I’m home like 10 hours a day. And even that is mostly sleeping. Wouldn’t be fair to the dog. Just like it’s not fair to the cat to never have chicken.
Can we not relaunch the argument that turned into a black hole, pulling everyone on Lemmy into a hellish void? Let’s keep the cat diet discussion in c/vegan, c/cats or some other devoted sublemmy.
I don’t agree with the outcome of THIS situation, but I DO agree with the idea that mods and admins are not gods on the fediverse. I like the concept of checks and balances, even if I disagree with the ruling. The fact that it’s not a god complex one person rule is better than what reddit has.
Can you elaborate? I want to understand.
I am not involved in the action above but it seems fair.
Lunatic vegans on lemmy? No way dude
Appreciate how you handled this, but denying a carnivore an appropriate diet is definitely animal abuse.
I think discussing the emerging field of plant based and synthetic replication of a carnivores diet using real research is pretty clear cut not animal abuse just because it can be animal abuse if not done carefully and because you say so. (Also, I’m not a vegan and I have never fed my cat vegan food, you guys are just obnoxious though)