This is a bit learning the wrong lesson from what happened, isn’t it? The problem is admin overreach. There was some disagreement on a sub, no big deal. I don’t even care what it’s about, I have no opinion on it. But now this admin comes in like Eric Cartman “Respect mah authoritah!”. What am I supposed to make of that? Nobody was advocating animal abuse. I worry about admins who can’t just let something go, who can’t handle disagreement, like a cop always looking to escalate.

So thanks for the rules clarification, I guess, but what about:

• won’t this general guideline of ‘do no harm’ stifle discussion in case it isn’t clear which is the harmful position? For example covid
• is there a process in place when an admin does something in the heat of the moment, that the admin team can let them cool off for a bit?
• is removing mods going to be the norm?
• will there be more rules when another admin disagrees with a mod?
• why was this escalated like this? Don’t you think removing mod status is an overreaction (procedure wise)?
• does the ‘anti animal abuse’ statute apply to animal consumption and animal products? Vegan community has a point there
• what about rooki?

All in all, please don’t kill this instance by telling people what to think. There is healthy discussion and people don’t always have to agree. That doesn’t make me a ‘free speech absolutist’. I think removing moderator privileges was quite out of bounds. Again, nobody was advocating animal abuse at all.

Mods and admins are here to keep discussion healthy, not impose their views on everyone else, right? So don’t! And don’t cover for others who do!

There’s a fine line between misinformation and “subjectively offensive information”. To me, this seems like it was a pretty clear case of abuse of power regardless of where you stand on the original issue and retroactively changing the rules to excuse that abuse does not bode well for this community.

Lmao all this over meat eaters getting mad at vegan cat food? I’m genuinely impressed that redditors are managing to turn Lemmy into a caricature of the godawful website they left.

GG

Don’t these rules make communities about BBQ or cooking meat in general against the rules? BBQ does put “any living being in imminent danger”.

Thank you all for doing this.

Health-related information should ideally be from peer-reviewed, reproducible scientific studies.

Note that even if a study is currently reproducible, it will only continue to be reproducible until it isn’t. There isn’t something fundamental that makes a specific scientific study objectively true or false — that isn’t how science works.

When in doubt, a policy of “Do No Harm”, based on the Hippocratic Oath, is a good compass on what is okay to post.

I understand that that’s likely well-intentioned, but, imo, it’s rather subjective — it’s more often a matter of relative perspective. That being said, it would be in your best interest to set as clear and precise definitions as you possibly can.

Non-peer-reviewed studies by individuals are not considered safe for health matters.

What does this statement mean? You are banning anyone from sharing anything that is not peer-reviewed…?

We know some folks who are free speech absolutists may disagree with this stance

That’s a bit of a stretch.

You’re backing yourself into a corner where you’ll have to respond to every shitbird that comes crying some content hurt their feelings. Removing illegal material is the only thing that’s expected, moderating people’s opinions because they might make someone put glue on pizza is solved by a “nothing on this instance should be considered a fact” banner. It seems petty and the optics only get worse as you slowly burn out and stop being consistent in censoring shit. Because that’s what it is. A cat might not be too stoked with its carefully balanced plant-based slop, but it’d be alive. Hope you’ll go into kink communities and censor the shit out of risky sexual practices.

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?

Respectfully, I believe this incident serves more as a learning opportunity for the admin team rather than a reason to amend the rules.

This isn’t the first time I’ve observed Rooki acting inappropriately for an admin of a community. As an admin of a (admittedly much smaller) corner of the internet, I’ve learned to interact with users in a way that is polite and ensures they feel safe and heard. This is at least the second instance where I’ve seen Rooki respond emotionally and rather adversarially towards users, which has, in my view, undermined their credibility, to the point that I hope to avoid future interactions with them.

I understand that managing LW, one of the largest and general-purpose instances, especially with Lemmy’s still rather limited moderation tools, is challenging, and I appreciate the hard work all of you, including Rooki, put into maintaining it and making it run as smoothly as it does. I’m NOT asking for their removal; however, considering that this is not the first time I’ve seen Rooki behave uncivilly and antagonistically towards users, I hope that this will be a formative experience for them.

(Edit for clarity)

This rogue admin was absolutely not acting with the best intentions. Is he kicked out of the admin team?

He was abusing the term “misinformation” even though it was extremely obvious that he had a personal vendetta against vegans. A vegan pet diet is perfectly possible, and vegans were merely saying that. There was no question for a source by anybody, because the source is just a simply google search away.

This admin is just anti vegan and was on a personal vendetta. He saw an opportunity to classify it as misinformation, so he just started removing posts and banning people. Why was /c/Vegan specifically targeted by this person?

“Oh but this vegan diet for your pet might hurt it!!”, bro you’re literally the one paying others to slaughter living beings.

I didn’t consider admins any more qualified in parsing medical journals than mods are. I’ve got letters behind my name and am not supremely confident in that. That said, anything like a pro-ana community should be quickly purged.

I’ve got no idea about the context of the vegan drama though.

The biggest issue with Reddit and Facebook was that they let stuff like this stick around it and eventually consume it.

It’s a good policy imho, and I’m happy to see it

Science should prevail

This doesn’t sound like free speech is welcomed here.

Am I wrong?

This instance gave me many signs of this happening, where only what one group of people think MUST be followed, but this kind of cements that now.

Internet has brought so many new social issues and yet no philosophers to ponder and find good solutions even though no one is working.

Strange

Walk into a vet office and tell them you want your cat to eat a vegan diet and watch their eyes roll at the speed of sound out of their skull