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!

Cats need a meat

“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.”

Does this mean it’s against the rules to promote keto, paleo, and carnivore diets? All of these cause a great deal of harm.

removed

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.

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

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.

Of course it was the vegans.

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lookin gauche

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.

Thank you all for doing this.

Peer reviewed scientific sources for people talking about health stuff? I can understand modding out “cyanide makes everything taste yummy” but at the other side, this isn’t Wikipedia. It’s a discussion forum and a lot of the topics will be about users’ own experiences and perceptions. If you want to run an academic journal instead, this isn’t the right way to do it.

The parent post also offers no answer at all about what decision was reached regarding the c/vegan intervention and whether such things should be allowed to happen again. Is there any update about that?

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?