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.
EDIT 2 (2024-08-31):
We’ve posted a response, sorry for the delay.
👉 https://lemmy.world/post/19264848 👈
So there is a study that shows that forcing your quest for a sense of absolute moral superiority on a obligate or fecultative carnivore by feeding them an unnatural vegan diet may not kill them?
The issue is choice and the fact that you are taking it away. Obligate and fecultative carnivores would choose to eat a diet consisting mainly of meat because that is what they evolved to eat and you are taking that away from them. These studies that say it may not be unhealthy are simply efforts to feed the self-satisfied circle jerk. Efforts to develop a vegan food that obligate and fecultative carnivores would choose to eat are efforts to overcome their nature which is to eat a diet consisting mainly of meat.
Forcing your beliefs on a being that isn’t given a choice.
Animal abuse.
Forcing your beliefs on a being that isn’t given a choice.
To be fair, we do this to pets all the time. What makes it abuse is if it’s harmful to them, not that we’re forcing it onto them.
Obviously but you can’t claim absolute moral superiority when you’re taking choice away from another living being. The argument is more about bursting the self-satisfied bubble than it is about any real issue.
It’s pretty hard to force a diet on a cat, especially if it is let outside. My family had cats when I was a kid. They could go outside when they pleased. Usually they came home at dinner time. Sometimes they stayed away for days or weeks, then came home. On a few occasions they never came back. Whether they met with unpleasant fates, found new human caretakers, or decided to live in the wild, we have no way to know. In any case though, staying with us was entirely optional for them and they usually but not always took the option. In fact they sometimes tried to feed us, by bringing home dead mice and squirrels and dropping them in front of us. (I don’t think we ever ate any).
Where is the choice being taken away? We offered them a commercial catfood diet and let them take it or leave it. Veganism didn’t come into this (we had never heard of veganism at that time) but that is irrelevant.
You should make that clear in your post, because you currently appear to be arguing that owning pets is animal abuse.
Forcing your beliefs on a being that isn’t given a choice.
Animal abuse.
I’m not a vegan, but it really cracks me up when people get up in arms about this subject they barely understand and arrive at the position that pet ownership/meat eating itself is unethical because it removes animal agency. Like, you’re making an ethically vegan argument you know.
I think that’s the point, the ethically vegan argument is not to own a pet that eats meat, and it’s odd these particular vegans in the channel couldn’t see it, and all the non vegans were pointing it out.
Pet ownership in general is not vegan, even if you gaslight yourself into calling them companions.
I’m not going to construct a straw man to dunk on all vegans without knowing their particular situation. I will, however, respond to absolutely silly and inconsistent arguments.
Radical veganism is extremism. Extremism is about a sense of absolute superiority and the ability to self-absolve. Vegan extremists are the same as every other type of extremist in that sense.
You’re the one making radical inflexible arguments here with an air of supremacy and lack of nuance while self absolving, hoss. That’s why what you’re saying is ethically inconsistent. You should take your own advice.
…but it really cracks me up when people get up in arms about this subject they barely understand and arrive at…
Pot: meet kettle.
Ah you’re a committed follower of our resident veterinary nutrition scientist and his opinions on “fecultative” carnivores and his extensive literature review of “I don’t believe that shit”, huh?
