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.
As noted in my post on the “moderation incident”, by adding more subjectivity to the rules, you are opening the door to even more instance moderator misconduct. There is already evidence of how that would go.
Rooki felt it right to intervene in the !vegan cat food thread (and got a pat on the back with the new rules made to justify their actions), then not only took no issue with comments like “Meat is not something diabetics need to worry about.” but also fueled the fire in the same thread by saying “To be honest linking something like meat to death of people is like saying everybody that breathed air died.”
So much for taking action against harmful dietary advice.
I’ve had similar with Rooki showing a distinct lack of depth and level headedness. I left here entirely for a month as a result of an interaction with them.
Seeing how this post is playing out seems insane to me. People may not like some aspect of this idea, but when presented with evidence, the response here has been eye opening an almost evangelical fervor with many that seem wholly incapable of objective thinking. I have not seen a single person claim they have tried feeding a cat a vegan diet, or that it is a good idea. All that I’ve seen is people mentioning in abstract that this has been researched. Hell, many things in common foods are derived from petroleum. Go watch Nile Red. Anything can about be made into anything, insert drain cleaner to grape soda here. I have no interest in eating crickets, meal worms, or algae, but these are a thing too. When I’m confronted with something new, I set myself aside and do not cast my emotions into the fray like an ignorant foolish child.
There is nothing special about murder diets. It is just organic chemistry. It may cost a fortune for someone to properly feed a cat, but I have no faith that the largely unregulated in practice pet food industry is much better or more ethical than someone doing proper scientific research. Mentioning the frontiers of science and causing a pitchfork mob like post shows I’m probably in the wrong kind of place here. I have far higher expectations for intellectual engagement than this disappointing display of biased and backwards ignorance.
If you’re talking about the upvotes and the supportive comments, I’m not even sure they reflect how the community would feel had they seen the full sequence of events* leading up to that decision.
As I previously mentioned, seemingly the first comment to start the chain of !vegan moderators’ and subsequent Rooki actions was the impolite “don’t force your shit on them” one-line comment by a user first exonerated, but later banned for trolling in another community by none other than Rooki.
The vegan comments were way lengthier, containing balanced (“it’s important to do a bit of extra research”, “cat nutrition is too complicated to be trying to make at home”) and seemingly thoughtful takes with a link to the NCBI.
Conversely, Rooki’s line of arguing contained little but outbursts like “have a nice rest of your life knowing you killed your loved pet” and “If anyone else thinks pets should be vegan i have no problem banning them for being a troll and promoting killing pets”, with unsubstantiated yet specific claims like “YES cats can survive vegan diet for few months”.
Sure, Rooki admitted to being emotional and said sorry after my post asking for their removal, but what’s the weight of that apology if the new rules echo those same talking points, from “misinformation” to the quite specific example “Unhealthy diets, e.g. due to insufficient nutrients”?
*Screenshots sent to me by a !vegan mod after my post - verifiable via the public modlog.
I love how the same groupthink from Reddit like “vegans bad” made it way over here verbatim, to the point where an admin goes out of their way to censor them. I don’t have a dog in this fight, but this was some blatant bias.
The real interesting thing is that just ~14 months ago this wasn’t the case. Anti-Vegans and a shift to more right wing “opinions” sadly go hand in hand.
This is not the first time Rooki has emotionally pushed their own agenda in the face of criticism. Rooki seems to very much want to tell others exactly how to think.
They should stick to programming as they are NOT a good fit for Admin.