It's a confusing post. Rooki justified the actions by citing "missinformation", though the ToS had no such rule at the time. I think they're trying to rewrite history now by bringing up animal abuse, but MrKaplan's explanation in the comments is that if there were no healthy implementation of vegan cat food, then they treat it as animal abuse. From having looked at the research, even Rooki weakly admitted that "it's not unhealthy", hence the reversal.

Rooki has never been removed from the position or paused activity. You're probably thinking of the !vegan mods first demoted, then reinstated by Rooki after my post asking for his removal as a moderator.

By the way, instance moderator MrKaplan said that it would be considered animal abuse if vegan cat food were inherently unhealthy, so by that logic, the overfed cat posts would also need to be removed, but I don't see that happening. The Lemmy.World mods are very selective about applying and interpreting the rules.

The animal abuse alleged at the time

Still misleading, because that's not the reason given by Rooki in the moment or days later. You also can't chalk it up to poor communication, since there's absolutely no logical connection between "misinformation" and "animal abuse".

As for the violent content rule, taking just one sentence from it and ignoring the rest is also as good as moderator misconduct, because by that same wild logic, one could take any other sentence from the rules, ignore the context, and use it to justify anything. It's like saying that because the ToS contain "It offers something of value to our users.", anything of value is okay. You will say "but that's under Advertising", so that's exactly what I'm saying too: the part on animal abuse is under Violent Content, in the context of visual depictions or descriptions of violence, not on its own, so it must be examined within its context only.

Moreover, what you're arguing is like saying that if you had the same sentence read "No content depicting, promoting or enabling abuse", it would be abusive and against the rules to tell people that, for example, junk food is fine ("because there is no healthy junk food").

it still had rules about animal abuse, which this misinformation, had it actually been misinformation, would have lead to

An instance moderator repeatedly cited a rule that was not in the ToS, then undid the damage a few days later also on the basis of "not missinformation". To me, that's a clear indication of what was on Rooki's mind at the moment.

Can you explain how "animal abuse" comes into the picture? Are you saying that if an instance moderator does something for a made-up reason that is not covered in the rules, the rest of the moderators still attempt to find a reason in the rules that sticks? Understood if so, but then which animal abuse rule are you talking about? Is it the one about the visual depiction of violent content, in the same paragraph as gore, dismemberment, and so on? How does that relate to cat food even remotely? I described it as a huge stretch in my "asking for removal" post and I still see it as a huge stretch. It's hard to understand why you would need to go for that unless trying to justify Rooki's actions which were completely unjustifiable from any angle.

Thanks for the shoutout! The power move was a clear violation on the side of Rooki. Words and other fluff aside, the new rule additions are the best indication of not only the lack of change but also doubling down on Rooki's original position, as described in further detail in my recent comments.

Once I've made the last comments and it's been a few days since the Lemmy.World announcements, I will fully migrate to lemmy.zip because of this incident, so going to my user page on here should make it easy for anyone curious about the events to get a much clearer picture.

The reason given by Rooki for most of the actions was "missinformation", not anything related to animal abuse. One of the two mods was demoted for "endangering pets". At the time of the incident, the only vaguely related rule was 6. Violent Content that talks about visual content depicting dismemberment, murder, suicide, animal abuse, and so on. Though the OP is confusing and at times inaccurate, it still accepts that "at the time there was no violation of site wide rules."

None of the rule changes make it less likely that someone like Rooki will use their power to push a view. They justify the misconduct, as they echo the reasons used by Rooki at the time of the incident while the post is also misleading about them.

What do you think of lemmy.zip?

It’s weird to me that you are indicating the only way to address someone making a mistake or not doing the best thing is “punishment”.

For one, I'd question that being a mistake (or using the "cat owner" excuse to justify it), as Rooki has repeatedly expressed the same kind of views even outside the context of cats and after the incident. That and the extent of Rooki's actions on !vegan, as well as Rooki's response to my "asking for removal" post shows it's a strongly held belief influencing the mod behavior rather than an emotional one-time response in the heat of the moment.

There has been no indication on Rooki's part that the actions were wrong and contrary to the rules, and that their behavior will be different going forward. The quiet comment edit from ten days ago that followed my post is a "sorry not sorry", as it continues to fuel the fire with a milder argument on vegan cat food rather than discussing Rooki's misconduct and the appropriate path forward.

The new ToS additions introducing a section on misinformation and specifically having to spell out "Unhealthy diets, e.g. due to insufficient nutrients)" fully echoing Rooki's original points suggests that either Rooki or someone on their behalf had argued strongly for that point in the private staff discussions, again suggesting that there is no change of perspective in sight.

Given those circumstances, yes, it's a talk about punishment.

It's not a concern when the instance moderator acts in accordance with the rules. Using it to further their personal view is the problem.

The comments were removed for violating our instance rule against animal abuse (https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/#11-attacks-on-users).

That's not true at all. The reason given by Rooki for the actions at the time was "missinformation" [sic]. The ToS had no rules on misinformation at the time.

But their comments are not forced above the comments of other users for the purpose of arguing a point.

These comments were not elevated to appear before any other users comments.

That's also untrue. Rooki specifically distinguished that comment (the shield icon) in addition to having the [A] (admin) icon next to their name.

We will not be removing Rooki from his position as moderator

In your post, you accept that the vegan comments were valid, thus Rooki was in the wrong. Why does an instance moderator get to interfere (and impact what the readers see for days) with absolute impunity and new rules created to back their talking points? Rooki was not even asked to pause their activity while you looked into the conduct. There was no punishment to discourage those acts at all. Where in the world does one side admit to being at fault but the remedy still favors that side only?

Edit: post->comment

Exactly. Those positions should generally be separated. Relying on a programmer that helps with running the instance on a technical level or developing for the instance inevitably weighs on the decision-making process when assessing their position as a moderator. Having that extra pull enables the moderator to misbehave with impunity.