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.
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
im here, and i do enjoy a good ponder, unfortunately the political right and some of the political left have consumed 100% of my philosophical pondering over the last 5 or so years.
The fundamental problem here in regards to feeding a cat a vegan diet is that you are forcing something onto an existing sentient (to some degree) being.
You as a human could live on rice and water exclusively, but it would most certainly not be optimal. The same is generally true for most living beings. The ultimate question here, once we get past feeding a pet whatever diet, is that pet ownership is to some degree, probably unethical at the source. Feeding them inherently brings up an ethical dilemma, as they are not a human, they cannot make a conscious choice about how their food is acquired. You as a vegan could theoretically raise and kill game to feed a cat which is probably the most ethical solution here, but that's not likely to be popular. The alternative being farm grown game, although it's likely to be off cuts and byproduct as humans eat the most desired parts, so the end result is probably fairly insignificant, unless you're feeding your cat a rich mans diet or something.
There is no one rule to fit all vegans, every vegan has to evaluate their own situations. You are right that some vegans are against all pet ownership. There is another group that believes if you rescue an animal from being euthanized or slaughtered and improve their standard of living and length of life, then that is ethical.
A huge part of being vegan is repetitive self-reflection, always searching for moral inconsistencies and working to fix them.
This is what leads vegans to consider a vegan diet for their pet, as if it was at least as healthy as non-vegan food, then less animals will be hurt due to the vegans choices.
Contrary to popular belief there are plenty of studies and case reports advocating for both sides of the argument of vegan cat food. Even by the admins new rules, we would be able to argue for vegan cat food as long as we only referenced studies.
Since its not settled either way, and multiple pet health and food organizations have stated their interest in researching the viability of vegan/vegetarian diets for dogs/cats, I think its fair to say it should be open for discussion.
yeah at the end of the day 90% of this stuff only matters on a personal level.
i think arguing over it is perfectly fine, people argue over all kinds of things, if the general debate around things is off topic, i can see why so many people are upset over it lol. As a non vegan i was just gleaning from what was being said here so i'm picking up what i can lol.
Regardless, it's a relevant discussion that needs to be had, and it has moral and scientific implications as well.
Though realistically, unless super apparent proof showed up, i probably wouldn't move to an entirely vegan diet.