Intro
We would like to address some of the points that have been raised by some of our users (and by one of our communities here on Lemmy.World) on /c/vegan regarding a recent post concerning vegan diets for cats. We understand that the vegan community here on Lemmy.World is rightfully upset with what has happened. In the following paragraphs we will do our best to respond to the major points that we’ve gleaned from the threads linked here.
Links
Actions in question
Admin removing comments discussing vegan cat food in a community they did not moderate.
The comments have been restored.
The comments were removed for violating our instance rule against animal abuse (https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/#11-attacks-on-users). Rooki is a cat owner himself and he was convinced that it was scientific consensus that cats cannot survive on a vegan diet. This originally justified the removal.
Even if one of our admins does not agree with what is posted, unless the content violates instance rules it should not be removed. This was the original justification for action.
Removing some moderators of the vegan community
Removed moderators have been reinstated.
This was in the first place a failure of communication. It should have been clearly communicated towards the moderators why a certain action was taken (instance rules) and that the reversal of that action would not be considered (during the original incident).
The correct way forward in this case would have been an appeal to the admin team, which would have been handled by someone other than the admin initially acting on this.
We generally discuss high impact actions among team before acting on them. This should especially be the case when there is no strong urgency on the act performed. Since this was only a moderator removal and not a ban, this should have been discussed among the team prior to action.
Going forward we have agreed, as a team, to discuss such actions first, to help prevent future conflict
Posting their own opposing comment and elevating its visibility
Moderators’ and admins’ comments are flagged with flare, which is okay and by design on Lemmy. 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.
In addition, Rooki has since revised his comments to be more subjective and less reactive.
Community Responses
The removed comments presented balanced views on vegan cat food, citing scientific research supporting its feasibility if done properly.
Presenting scientifically backed peer reviewed studies is 100% allowed, and encouraged. While we understand anyone can cherry pick studies, if a individual can find a large amount of evidence for their case, then by all accounts they are (in theory) technically correct.
That being said, using facts to bully others is not in good faith either. For example flooding threads with JSTOR links.
The topic is controversial but not clearly prohibited by site rules.
That is correct, at the time there was no violation of site wide rules.
Rooki’s actions appear to prioritize his personal disagreement over following established moderation guidelines.
Please see the above regarding addressing moderator policy.
Conclusions
Regarding moderator actions
We will not be removing Rooki from his position as moderator, as we believe that this is a disproportionate response for a heat-of-the-moment response.
Everybody makes mistakes, and while we do try and hold the site admin staff to a higher standard, calling for folks resignation from volunteer positions over it would not fair to them. Rooki has given up 100’s of hours of his free time to help both Lemmy.World, FHF and the Fediverse as a whole grown in far reaching ways. You don’t immediately fire your staff when they make a bad judgment call.
While we understand that this may not be good enough for some users, we hope that they can be understanding that everyone, no matter the position, can make mistakes.
We’ve also added a new by-laws section detailing the course of action users should ideally take, when conflict arises. In the event that a user needs to go above the admin team, we’ve provided a secure link to the operations team (who the admin’s report to, ultimately). See https://legal.lemmy.world/bylaws/#12-site-admin-issues-for-community-moderators for details.
TL;DR In the event of an admin action that is deemed unfair or overstepping, moderators can raise this with our operations team for an appeal/review.
Regarding censorship claims
Regarding the alleged censorship, comments were removed without a proper reason. This was out of line, and we will do our best to make sure that this does not happen again. We have updated our legal policy to reflect the new rules in place that bind both our user AND our moderation staff regarding removing comments and content. We WANT users to hold us accountable to the rules we’ve ALL agreed to follow, going forward. If members of the community find any of the rules we’ve set forth unreasonable, we promise to listen and adjust these rules where we can. Our terms of service is very much a living document, as any proper binding governing document should be.
Controversial topics can and should be discussed, as long as they are not causing risk of imminent physical harm. We are firm believers in the hippocratic oath of “do no harm”.
We encourage users to also list pros and cons regarding controversial viewpoints to foster better discussion. Listing the cons of your viewpoint does not mean you are wrong or at fault, just that you are able to look at the issue from another perspective and aware of potential points of criticism.
While we want to allow our users to express themselves on our platform, we also do not want users to spread mis-information that risks causing direct physical harm to another individual, origination or property owned by the before mentioned. To echo the previous statement “do no harm”.
To this end, we have updated our legal page to make this more clear. We already have provisions for attacking groups, threatening individuals and animal harm, this is a logical extension of this to both protect our users and to protect our staff from legal recourse and make it more clear to everyone. We feel this is a very reasonable compromise, and take these additional very seriously.
Sincerely,
FHF / LemmyWorld Operations Team
EDIT: Added org operations contact info
Feeding a carnivore a vegan diet indeed is animal abuse. Cats can survive, but survival and healthy are not the same. Cats on a vegan diet get sick much faster and die younger, statistically according to vets. I’m a vegan, I have cats, I feed them meat. If you don’t like feeding your pets meat, get a herbivore pet instead.
The way things were handled may have been wrong, but animal abuse should be banned from Lemmy imo.
IDK it seems like pretty clear animal abuse to me
Cats are obligate carnivores. It is 100% animal abuse.
Can we not restart the argument please.
To me, it’s a lot more important in this post to look at the response from mods and admins to a disagreement (and infighting, and mistakes made).
Personally it seems like it was handled well, at least eventually (here). Do you feel one way or the other?
It is relevant though, since the issue of it being animal abuse or not is central to the whole thing.
Is it not animal abuse? Then what has happened in this post is correct.
Is it animal abuse? Then this post shows that the admins will roll over if they get enough push back from a group of users.
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.”
Sometimes I feel like people would like to restart this argument every time it is mentioned, even after 2 threads with hundreds of comments on the topic
People like drama.
Cat drama in particular seems to always hit maximum outrage really fast.
Animal abuse is a touchy subject for many people, yes.
People like to virtue signal about things they don’t know anything about.
Carnivores like to call vegans animal abusers.
Bro can you not
See everyone just loves drama, no matter which side they are on.
*Carnists. Carnivores have no choice in consuming meat. Carnists delibrately choose to do so even when it’s not required.
but if the cat enjoyed the vegan food and the food provided all the nutrients, would you have an issue with it?
Who is arguing? One is factual and the other is willfully ignorant to the point of harming their animal. It’s like giving flat earth any credibility, it’s objectively against science.
…everyone is arguing? Considering the studies given by both sides, and the constant promotion of that one brand of vegan cat food, it’s hard to give one side a clear objective win (though I do lean toward giving the cat meat).
Because what you consider a fact is based on studies that don’t provide as compelling evidence as you want to believe they do.
Generally speaking, it’s probably best to not do it, but calling it outright abuse requires evidence that it is causing actual harm, and the scientific consensus on it is not as solid as you think it is.
Recent academic review of many past studies have found that it’s inconclusive.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9860667/
Basically, we need more studies before we can start deleting shit on accusations of animal abuse.
I’ve looked into this and every worthwhile study seems to point to issues with the vegan diet and then potential benefits. I’ve not seen one that shows serious positive aspects without negative ones. I’m open to being shown any though (aside from the one everyone seems to link where they just talked to cat owners). I’m not trying to spin this debate back up, just saying that the science does seem pretty clear.
Even in this one: According to the U.S. National Research Council’s (NRC) recommendations on nutrient requirements for dogs and cats [15,16], potentially problematic elements in vegan/vegetarian diets for dogs and cats could be: (1) insufficient protein; (2) unbalanced fats; and (3) nutrient insufficiencies [17]. For example, it has been shown that exercising dogs that consume unbalanced plant protein diets can develop anemia and a marked decrease in red blood cell hemoglobin levels but will return to health if the diet with vegetable protein is balanced properly [18].
That brings up another side of this, the academic discussion side. It’s good if the moderation policies allow discussion, since that’s how we can talk about new research and changing science. We are a discussion forum afterall
If a group accounts seem to be pushing a certain viewpoint or moderating in bad faith, then that’s a related but possibly separate issue
To me it just indicates how much of the Lemmy population hasn’t studied any bio past maybe first year HS level, or any advanced chemistry either for that matter. And how much people on the internet like fighting with vegans. The two influences together are very powerful.
Or maybe people just don’t like animal abuse? It’s okay to sometimes just go with the straightforward explanation. Don’t abuse cattle et all for human diets, don’t abuse your cat via its diet, and so on.
Sure, understandable. But their scientific arguments for it being animal abuse are very distinctly first year bio-tier.
If it’s a tricky line between keeping your cat healthy and unhealthy, just get a different pet.
The response of mods and admins is that they removed content that promotes animal abuse and that got people mad enough so they went and restored the content promoting animal abuse.
Whether a pet gets the food it needs isn’t something you can even have an opinion about. You can have understandings, misunderstandings, or the scientific understanding itself could change. Anything attempting to hone that is fine.
To frame something like that as a disagreement is fundamentally dishonest. The question is what’s nutritionally best for cats. We and our stupid feelings are secondary. I don’t even have any familiarity with the subject myself, I only know it’s not the realm of opinions. Cats need meat or they don’t, in certain amounts, types, at certain intervals, etc.
Cats need meat or they don’t
And yet this binary assumption that you’re taking completely for granted for some reason is fundamentally flawed. Cats need amino acids from meat that they cannot produce themselves. The scientific research being conducted is over whether these amino acids can be artificially produced and vegan cat food fortified with them in such a way that the cats can properly absorb them. If yes, then voila, you have healthful vegan cat food.
This also supposes that there are not other essential (to cats) nutrients beyond taurine that would be absent.
True. I believe B12 is the other big one, although that is trivially supplemented to my recollection.
Whether a pet gets the food it needs isn’t something you can even have an opinion about.
To be fair, I have a pretty strong opinion on pets getting the food they need. My opinion is that not feeding an animal appropriately is, at best, neglectful.
The great thing is that it’s easy to find out what is an appropriate diet for any pet, clever scientists figured it out and wrote up guidelines for us to follow. Here in the UK for example we would follow the European FEDIAF;
Pet food nutritional guidelines for manufacturers in the UK are produced by FEDIAF (the European Pet Food Industry). These guidelines (also known as Codes) detail the nutritional needs of cats and dogs at varying life stages. They are regularly updated to include the latest nutritional research.
https://europeanpetfood.org/self-regulation/safety
So long as you’re following the guidelines and giving your pet all the nutrients it needs - regardless of how they’re produced (vegan food is fine so long as it replicates the full dietary needs of the animal for example) - you’re good 😊👍
I know it’s silly to have to point that out, I’m not sure why people argued over it (I didn’t see the original discourse). But yes, just to reiterate, it doesn’t matter how you prefer to source the food - vegan, halal, whatever fits your beliefs - just so long as it is a nutritionally complete diet for the animal <3
On the subject of admin/moderation, it is wonderful to see the team trying to be thoughtful, transparent, and kind even in the face of high tempers and heated beliefs. I wish we had more of this calibre of person out in the world :-)
(vegan food is fine so long as it replicates the full dietary needs of the animal for example) - you’re good 😊
Vegan food is the opposite of replicating the full dietary needs of anything
Ok, I’m a literal butcher but citation needed. You’re just being obnoxious (and this isn’t even the topic of this thread)
Oh god, oh fuck, we need to get the word out to these highly educated nutritional scientists, cardiologists, gastroenterologists, endocrinologists, pulmonologists, oncologists, bariatricians, and nephrologists that “it’s the opposite, actually” as soon as possible. I’ll bet they’ll feel like idiots when they need to retract the dozens of meta-analyses and systemic reviews they’ve meticulously authored both showing that plant-based diets tend to be healthier than omnivorous ones and giving explanations for why.
A lot of these studies are funded by vegan grifters so no yeah no
Thanks, we’re trying to chime in where we can and do hope the post at least helps provide some transparency on what happened. 🙏
Yep. The doublespeak here is wild. “Controversial topics can and should be discussed, as long as they are not causing risk of imminent physical harm. Therefore, we are leaving up comments that cause imminent risk of physical harm.”
Forget the particular details of this issue. It feels way, way more strongly like they’re trying to duck out of having to take action.
And humans weren’t made to eat tablets and get injected with mixtures from syringes.
IDK it seems like pretty clear human abuse to me
If medical drugs can be made to be safe and compatible with humans there’s nothing stopping it for the same happening for vegan food for cats
I think people are misunderstanding your comment as anti-science :(
No, people are down voting it for being a bad argument, because humans can in fact make the choice not to take those tablets or get those injections.
But these cats that are forced a vegan diet can’t.
Oh sure, they could choose to not eat, and die a bit faster than they would on the vegan food, but no animal will choose to ignore food when they are hungry.
Cats don’t get to have a choice in a lot of things.
I fail to see how food would be the bad compared to sterilization, breeding, medical injections, outings and other things infringing on their autonomy.
Oh well…
humans can in fact make the choice not to take those tablets or get those injections
My infant child has less agency over what he eats than my pet dog. They both get vaccinated over vocal objection.
Humans do not, in fact, get to make these choices. Other, older, wiser humans routinely make these decisions on their behalf.
https://www.benevo.com/vegan-cat-food-from-benevo/
Benevo Cat foods contain all the nutrients an adult cat needs, including a wide range of vitamins (including A, B, D, E, K), essential fatty acids and taurine, without the need for slaughterhouse meat. Although obligate carnivores in the wild, domestic cats still need nutrients they would normally source from prey. Thankfully Benevo Cat contains all those nutrients in a bioavailable kibble.
Benevo Cat is a professional cat food, created by Benevo in 2005, formulated and checked by independent animal nutritionists to meet the AAFCO(USA) and FEDIAF(Europe) guidelines for animal nutrition.
We’ve had safe and healthy variants of vegan cat food for 20 years. Trying to elevate the question to animal abuse speaks entirely to personal ignorance.
Cut and paste blurb from a marketing website from a manufacturer. That you cut and pasted from your top level comment which currently is at -30 due to it’s lack of actual sources or anything of value.
This is not helpful to anyone and you may be out of your depth if you think it is.
I am not taking a position on feeding cats vegan food. I am just pointing out you are arguing so weakly you’re actually doing your position a disservice.
Your argument is very weak, you are just citing a company that sells vegan food for animals, a very clear conflict of interest.
For instance, I can also cite some Google PR page on how much they care about privacy.
Farm feedstock.contain all the nutrients an adult cow needs, including a wide range of vitamins (including A, B, D, E, K), essential fatty acids and taurine, without the need for grass. Although obligate herbivores in the wild, domestic cows still need nutrients they would normally source from vegetation. Thankfully farm feedstock contains all those nutrients in a bioavailable grain.
grain is a professional cow food, created by grain manufacturers in 50,000BC, formulated and checked by independent animal nutritionists to meet the AAFCO(USA) and FEDIAF(Europe) guidelines for animal nutrition.
We’ve had safe and healthy variants of cow food for 52,000 years. Trying to elevate the question to animal abuse speaks entirely to personal ignorance.
Eta - modifying the diet of a domesticated animal for your convenience seems to run contrary to the premise of minimising animal cruelty.
You might be surprised at how much corn, grains, and other non-meat stuff there is in cat food. Particularly in cheap dry kibble that nobody typically bats an eye at someone feeding to their cat.
This conversation just seems so weird to me. The number of people who feed their cats anything similar to what they’d be eating in the wild is minuscule.
Meat isn’t some magic substance, biological chemical reactions turns grass into cows. That you think you can’t take those nutrients and make them bioavailable to an obligate carnivore is absurd. Ever seen an impossible burger?
And if you think the cruelty stems from the idea that cats wouldn’t like it, I gotta say. I have my cat on an expensive grain free meat heavy diet. And I know for a fact that he goes crazy for the cheap shitty corn based purina kibble. He has busted into other people’s homes to steal kibble from their cats.
So is it cruel for me to feed him a more nature based diet when it’s clear he prefers corn based trash?
I don’t see any reason why a functional vegan cat food couldn’t exist.
Is domestication animal cruelty?
“Our vegan cat food is totally safe and normal”, says the vegan cat food manufacturers.
You have to be a vegan to believe that bullshit lmao
So, by your logic, shouldn’t there be a bunch of malnourished and dying cats as a result of people buying this food and only letting their cats subsist on it?
Where are the outraged customers? Where are the lawsuits?
People who are dumb enough to spend extra money on vegan food for their carnivorous pets aren’t usually smart enough to realize it was the problem.
And as for the few that eventually figure it out, they’re smart enough to realize saying “I fed my carnivorous pets a vegan diet” does not reflect well on them.
So you have no evidence at all and are purely speculating. Gotcha
My evidence is vegans of Lemmy going up in arms against moderation because they deleted content about feeding a carnivorous animals a vegan diet.
That isn’t evidence that the aforementioned cat food will cause cats to become malnourished. That’s just you speculating to confirm your existing biases.
I appreciate your comments here, even if the people you’re trying to educate completely ignore you and downvote you because they have no response to the fact that vegan cat food exists.
I’m not vegan, but the hysterical ignorance espoused in this comment section is bewildering.
Shitty McDonald’s burgers exist, it doesn’t mean they are healthy and safe to eat.
All I’m getting from this entire saga is that vegans on here are lunatics. From forcing this nonsense on pets, to all of the follow-up, this is a very bad look for the community, from somone looking in from the outside.
This is some cultish behavior…
Vegans are fine, it are those that enforce/demand it from others that are radicals, all radicals are lunatics.
meat eaters are fine. it’s just those that enforce and demand it from others.
Are they in the room with you right now?
yes. spewing their toxic meat identifying propaganda!
Only joking. some of my best friends pay people to kill animals for them.
You get that from anywhere with a chamber that echos well enough. There’s the folks who don’t have kids or want them, and then there’s the anti-natalists who call the people who have children breeders and their kids crotchspawn. There’s the Christians and the Religious Right. Jews and Zionists. List goes on.
don’t for get the toxic masculinity style meat eaters!
Not sure how thats relevant to my comment. Are you sure you’re replying to the right person?
some people eat meat. some people make it part of their core identity. it’s funny.
Says the guy who’s entire comment history is identifing by what they eat.
no you!
Very mature
I haven’t seen echo chambers for the “Bacon is my personality” guys at all, while all the others mentioned are definitely things that exist.
I think this is showing that about 70% of the people on here are incapable of reconsidering their positions on something.
To me thats upsetting, but then again lemmy.world is the low hanging fruit of the fediverse. Other servers would never have picked this fight to begin with.
It’s almost like Lemmy is just another social media site with the same types of people as every other social media site. Regardless of how seemingly a lot of Lemmy users view themselves and Lemmy as a whole.
Yeah…and entirely unsurprising.
Im no vegan, and was originally convinced that giving cats vegan food was animal abuse, and am still sure its best for cats to eat meat But really, seeing so much people just saying ‘vegans are hysteric/lunatic/cultist’ without any more reflection gave me a weird vibe, like it’s the exact same rethoric used against any progressist idea It got me thinking, like I think I disagree with vegans on the vegan cat food thing but people are being so mean to vegans and tolerant to power abuse, i’d rather be on the vegan side
Its likely because most of the arguments against vegan cat food are “of course its bad”, which is a horrible reason to think anything.
I hope some people also noticed this and allowed them the opportunity to learn more about what is possible for a cats diet.
Same boat here. I’m not a vegan (pescatarian) but it seems to me people are reacting (understandably) emotionally because everyone loves pets and wants the best for them.
You’re probably right, I did not see things from that point of view. It would make sense that this awful reaction is partly due to emotional aspects. Thanks for pointing it out!
my only argument for the vegan food is this: if the cat enjoys the food and it provides all the nutrients then what is the issue?
No one is suggesting we force feed cats wall paper paste.
Caring about animal abuse is cultish behavior?
No. Caring about animal welfare and refusing to support the industrial farming complex is noble and admirable.
Trying to force your diet and ideas onto animals that cannot object is fucked up.
If you can’t feed your pet a proper diet do not get a pet.
If you haven’t done the smallest iota of research into what vegan pet foods entail, declaring them an improper diet as a knee jerk reaction is, quite frankly, not a good look for you.
So far the only “research” shared on this thread has been a marketing blurb from a manufacturer who makes this stuff.
Not sure the people arguing for this are able to actually conduct research, let alone post about it in an intelligent way.
Considering all the links posted in the last circlejerk thread were dismissed out of hand as “pro vegan” I’m not surprised nobody is wasting their time here.
Not sure the people arguing against this are aware how much corn, rice, soy, and supplemental taurine is in the meat based foods they give their cats already anyway, so it hardly seems worthwhile to go back to square one every fifth post.
Feel free to do some research. I’m sure you’d trust your own eyes better than some random posting here.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YxjGa0MXfAc
Let me know which parts you disagree with.
yeah. downvote a video of a guy presenting work in the field.
cats are quite capable of leaving if they are not getting food they enjoy.
absolutely fucking insane - imagine suggesting a pet could “leave if they don’t like it” for any other form of animal abuse.
Insane, unless you have ever had a semi feral cat.
By the beard of Zeus, what a horrible day to be literate and morbidly curious.
These comments feel like a basketball game, except there’s a wall in the middle and teams are just scoring points on their own hoop. Also every two comments someone throws a shovelful of shit over the wall.
Cats are not vegan lol
To be totally honest you have nothing to apologize for. Dogs and cats are metabolically different to humans and cannot survive on a vegan diet unlike us. Forcing obligate carnivore pets on vegan diets is certainly animal abuse.
I remember when there was a growing campaign to ban r/nonewnormal on Reddit due to it being a hub of medical disinformation and conspiracy theories surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, and that this led to a blackout much like the later API protests.
Rather than read the room and introduce a new rule banning medical disinformation, Reddit’s Tintin-looking moron of a CEO instead threw out tonnes of BS statistics on brigading likely plucked out of his own sphincter, and banned the subreddit because their activity exceeded this arbitrary percentage he made up.
And before you tell me this guy’s figures were legit, aren’t we forgetting that he pathologically lied about his interactions with the Sync developer? Spez is a snake.
I am not a vegan, but I do try to make food choices that are as ethical and healthy as I can… or at least as far as I can afford.
Cats are carnivores. Fact. This is not debatable. But I think you could also meet or exceed a cats nutritional needs from other sources. Whether those sources are readily available and whether a person is sufficiently meeting those needs… that’s another can of worms.
Generally, I’d argue that if you are hell-bent on a vegan diet, then you should not own carnivorous pets. No matter how well meaning you are, there is a significant chance that you will inflict harm on your pet, and that is unacceptable.
Vegans and pets are something different. Most vegans do not buy pets. Vegans almost exclusively adopt them.
It’s also not really “forcing”. You are trying out a new diet and closely monitoring whether they like it and if they are healthy. There are vegan pet food brands that contain all the required nutrients. It even smells like non vegan pet food. It’s actual research that went into this.
You can hate on all the stupid vegans that would force pets to eat salad while being malnourished and when they put their believes before the needs of the cat. But that goes against the common vegan saying: “as far as is possible and practicable”. It’s also the reason why these topics are discussed among vegans, to learn what is possible and what isn’t.
I think many people forget that vegans do care about animals, and often try to point out some possible hypocrisy when they are in fact the biggest hypocrites.
I hope some people will understand. In this modern age we can even deliver all the required nutrients to people trough IV. We’re much more advanced than this stupid cavemen mentality.
Anyways, thanks for reading. Yes I am vegan. I’ll probably get downvoted but that’s fine.
It’s also not really “forcing”. You are trying out a new diet and closely monitoring whether they like it and if they are healthy
Ignoring the rest of the post, if you control 100% of what a cat eats and then change what that cat may and must eat, that is 100% forcing something.
Pretty reasonable response. This actually made me change my mind up to the possibility of feeding cats a vegan diet from being unacceptable to being an acceptable practice. It’s not one I’m willing to practice on my cats, but I will reserve any judgment when I hear of others practicing it in the wild.
Stay away from my pets.
You’re forgetting some people are idiots, especially those “better than others” who do crap like this.
You might be surprised at how much corn, grains, and other non-meat stuff there is in cat food. Particularly in cheap dry kibble that nobody typically bats an eye at someone feeding to their cat.
This conversation just seems so weird to me. The number of people who feed their cats anything similar to what they’d be eating in the wild is minuscule.
Meat isn’t some magic substance, biological chemical reactions turns grass into cows. That you think you can’t take those nutrients and make them bioavailable to an obligate carnivore is absurd. Ever seen an impossible burger?
And if you think the cruelty stems from the idea that cats wouldn’t like it, I gotta say. I have my cat on an expensive grain free meat heavy diet. And I know for a fact that he goes crazy for the cheap shitty corn based purina kibble. He has busted into other people’s homes to steal kibble from their cats.
So is it cruel for me to feed him a more nature based diet when it’s clear he prefers corn based trash?
I don’t see any reason why a functional vegan cat food couldn’t exist.
Not that I think Rooki was wrong with what they did. But it doesn’t take a genius to figure out how fast such stuff can get out of control.
Thing happened. Admins reflected on thing. Came up with solution. Communicated solution with community in an understandable and transparent manner. Perfect.
If that lazy fucks over at Reddit would have been half as good as you with theirs jobs, we probably wouldn’t be here to begin with.
There could be a technical fix for this. Lemmy could use a system that requires certain moderator and/or admin actions to require a 2-person authorization, and temporarily put the action in an “under review” state for a set amount of time.
For instance, an admin removing content would replace it with a placeholder for up to 2 days. If another admin accepts the change then the comment is removed. If no other admin responds then the content is put back.
This is pretty much Change Management.
Would be fine as an option that could be enabled, especially for larger communities, but an instance run by a single person wouldn’t be able to host communities if it was a built in requirement for all communities.
Of course.
Solid idea. One consequence of this would be the possible delay in removing material that really should be removed as fast as possible, though.
Which is why the content would get masked until a 2nd person approves or it gets unmasked.
Right, but that content will still exist server side.
Change Management can account for that, but if it’s truely that big of a problem then there might be legal or other compelling reasons to keep the content server side and inaccessible.
Personally, I like this idea. But it can be equally abused if two admins colluded to agree with each other. But, I think it’s at least better than nothing.
I would imagine this would need to be done at the software level to be most effective. You should request this sort of feature from the Lemmy team to integrate into both the backend and the UI.
If you do create issues for this request, you should post back here (or whatever related community) so people can upvote the issues to show the devs we really want the feature.
You can’t fix people problems with technical solutions. I know tech folk like to think they can, but it really doesn’t work. Sometimes you simple needs some rules, guides, and a good book to slap someone with.
Maybe not fix, but some things can certainly help.
I was just thinking about this: peer review admin actions. A first admin could initiate the action, then the peer review could be assigned randomly to another admin - randomly so that admins can’t create specific cartels to team up on specific topics.
A slight modification, it could be implemented as a suggested action where the admins (or mods) can ask for a second opinion when they feel it’s appropriate.
That way urgent actions can happen right away, and potentially controversial actions can be discussed. It should solve the problem without forcing a specific workflow
Upvoting and commenting for visibility, this is a great idea. Though concur with snooggums below that it would need to be an opt-in option.
In theory a good idea, but there is lots of content that needs to be gone serverside asap - either because it’s CP, otherwise illegal, spam that clogs down the Fediverse/can even be used to DoS a server,etc.
Illegal things probably need to be retained as evidence. It’s many times illegal to remove evidence if you think it’s possibly relevant.
I’m not a lawyer, but I’d consult one about this.
It depends very much on the legislation - in many legislations it is absolutely illegal to retain it.
Anyway, there are more than enough non-evidence class materials that need to be removed asap.
The comments in here are unbelievable. This post was about the systemic moderation issues that lead to the incident, the team’s response to it, and how to deal with such a problems in the future.
Half the comments: CATS CAN’T EAT VEGAN
The other half: CATS CAN TOO EAT VEGAN
There are people here who need to go back to fucking reddit.
in defense of those people the previous thread showed up on basically every lemmy instance under the sun, there are memes about it now.
I’m not sure what else you were expecting with a site wide drama such as this tbh.
The question is at the root of which moderator’s actions are correct. There’s a reactionary bias from tons of Reddit-fugees that came out of vegan bashing and anti-vegan hysteria which we see crop up repeatedly.
It can be difficult to distinguish between people sincere, abet misguided, beliefs and outright trolls. And moderation takes a significant temporal and emotional toll. “Vegans are killing their pets/kids!!!” is a popular panic phrase intended to gin up hostility. Consequentaly, the mods in these communities are playing endless wack-a-mole with trolls who just want to conflate veganism with an esoteric form of cruelty.
Establishing a bright line of appropriate content is important for good moderation. But to know where that line is, you need some degree of objection information.
Which brings us back to the fundamental question of whether safe, reliable vegan cat food exists (spoilers: it’s been around for decades). But if you don’t accept that premise, you’re going to see any mod censorship as some diabolical cat killing agenda.
Cats are obligate carnivores. It’s trivial to stroll into any store and get food that will make your cat healthy but its not clear how easy it is to get vegan food that will do the same. Seems like if you don’t believe in eating meat you should just not have a little carnivore in your home. For instance rabbits can be trained to live inside, cuddle with you, and poop in a box.
go back to fucking reddit
Yeah, fuck reddit, and fuck u/spez.
Er, am I doing this right?
It’s not just a diet thing, it’s a matter of animal abuse.
I don’t doubt that there are options out there for people that want to feed their pets a vegan-friendly diet, but given that cats primarily eat meat the idea of promoting a vegan diet that isn’t heavily monitored and noted by their vet is an awful look for the vegan community and Lemmy. You absolutely cannot expect people to just treat this as a moderation issue, because at its most fundamental level it’s about whether lemmy.world supports content that is harmful to animals.
I said it elsewhere here, and since people don’t like it being raised I’ll say it again: shit like this wouldn’t fly on Reddit. Lemmy has a poor reputation on the Fediverse for housing extreme opinions, and this debacle really won’t help its reputation as a fed-friendly alternative to Reddit. Saying “go back to Reddit” just highlights the problem more, and is probably why there are plenty of posts on the Fediverse asking why Lemmy is so hostile, or why it’s nowhere near as friendly as many communities on Mastodon.
Here’s an idea, why don’t you save your argument for one of the myriad posts that have popped up discussing this very subject of whether or not cats can eat vegan or not and whether or not that is abuse.
But here and now within this post is a discussion over whether or not mods acted recklessly and whether or not there is a need for better guidelines on what is and isn’t allowed. Which were discussed in the post that you apparently didn’t read.
At no point did the author of this post open up the floor to discuss whether or not veganism is good, bad, or ugly for cats.
Because the question at the time wasn’t does lemmy.world support potential animal abuse. Whether it is or isn’t isn’t really the topic here, but if one side feels strongly against the potential for abuse, there’s a question regarding lax moderation and what an instance supports.
Again, it’s not a great look for a community that isn’t looked upon favourably across the fediverse. Again, I’m sure it is possible that someone has created a vegan-friendly brand of cat food, but you have to assume that the topic of potential abuse will come up. Is an online forum the appropriate place to be giving what could be harmful advice that could endanger an animal if the wrong brand is pushed?
Telling people what to say and where, very reddit of you.
You could have just ignored the post and move on guy.
Oh no you have turned the tables on me! 😱
My words are meaningless now!!!
Maybe.
Here’s an idea, why don’t you save your argument for one of the myriad posts that have popped up discussing this very subject of whether or not this is the right forum to discuss this.
At no point did I open up the floor to discuss whether or not your stance is good, bad, or ugly. I only talked about your delivery.
Difficulty level of Reddit is too high, since people would actually need to, you know, read stuff, in order to have “read it.”
Vegans win this time.
In the end, vegans are always going to win, because a vegan way of life is one (but not the only) precondition for ways of life that are actually sustainable.
All the vegans I meet in real life are normal ass people.
Because those are normal people. “Lifestyle” communities on the internet invariably devolve into groupthink cesspits of the most unhinged followers of that lifestyle.
Veganism is the worst. It’s like the terminally online crazies can telepathically detect anyone discussing veganism and descend en-mass.
It’s unfortunate because I just want a place where I can ask where to find comfortable walking shoes that don’t have leather.
Why not a good pair of sneakers? All the sneakers I usually look for are just made of synthetic materials AFAIK
You might get the impression that we are lol
deleted by creator
You might get the impression that we are lol
A vegan bot; now I’ve seen it all.
deleted by creator
@lwadmin For full disclosure I agree with rooki on this topic.
I may have missed it in the write up but I think the vegan mods needlessly escalated the situation by trying to ban and remove comments from an admin.
I am not saying I always agree with rooki but I respect his job as an admin.
The mods of vegan treated him disrespectfully in his capacity as an admin by deleting and banning him.
You should cover this in your terms of service.
The mods acted disrespectfully? The admins admitted they were in the wrong; it was the mods on the receiving end of this. People in positions of authority should be able to deescalate things. That’s not what happened. People in positions of authority should not be able to use “They disrespected me” as a reason to escalate. If you think that sentence applies to mods but not admins, you’ve got a really dissonant way of looking at things.
The mods deleted the admins comment and tried to ban him from the community. That’s a no no in my book.
If the mods felt rooki was wrong, they shouldn’t have tried to display a power trip with their actions. They should have escalated to other admins.
Rooki deescalated by removing them as mods. That stopped their childish behavior.
Rooki deescalated
If that’s your definition of deescalating, you’re either disingenuous or an idiot. Enter way, you’re not worth further attention. I would suggest you actually look up deescalation so it’s not so obvious next time in either case p
I think what people generally want is not reddit. The mods in reddit have almost no accountability from admin.
Oftentimes comments are removed just because a mod doesn’t agree or like the content.
I was banned from r/Ukraine simply for saying we shouldn’t demonize the entire population of Russia for the actions of their government. I later argued with the mod through their “arbitration process” and he would not unban me. (What really hurt is that I’m Ukrainian. It was an improvement sub for me)
No one wants that! Please don’t let that happen here!
I’m glad you’re sticking to your guns on this. At the end of the day, it should NOT be up to the admin team who are not subject matter experts to determine what is and is not considered “truth” especially in cases where there is still active research on the topic.
I also can totally see how this topic can elicit a knee jerk reaction, because people have been known to put animals on vegan diets irresponsibly, but we don’t block people from posting “chonkers” or obese cats which is literally the same thing where people will often intentionally overfeed their cats for this aesthetic which is also clearly abuse in the exact same vein.
I also think its a good thing you reinstated the admin after some reflection and a well thought out response and statement. It doesn’t seem like they are on some crazy power trip either.
The comments were removed for violating our instance rule against animal abuse
The comments have been restored
What… So the rules don’t matter if enough people get angry, I see
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.
cats can live on a vegan diet. so it’s hardly animal abuse.
Well in germany you would get up to 3 years prison time for trying that bullshit. because it absolutely is animal abuse. quote the The German Veterinary Association for Animal Welfare
"A strictly vegan cat diet [would] be tantamount to an unauthorized, uncontrolled animal experiment and violates § 3 No. 10 of the Animal Welfare Act "
“Force-feeding for the purpose of an ideologically justified change of diet to vegetarian rations is a violation of § 3 No. of the Animal Welfare Act”
cheery picking laws aside, if the food provides all the necessary nutrition and the cat enjoys it, then I see no issue.
cheery picking laws aside
That would imply there was “cherry” picking to be set aside.
cherry picking in this case would imply picking only the law(s) that supports the bias of the poster, to the exclusion of other laws that contradict this position.
I’d be interested in seeing the contradicting laws you think would make this cherry picking, do you have any links ?
Do you have proof of that being the case or are you just throwing stuff out there?
Ima throw your own words back at you.
You are cherry picking the few favorable studies over the heaps of unfavorable studies.
how about this meta study?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9860667/
there are few studies at the moment. however, it does appear to be bad for cats.
You asked for peer reviewed studies into the palatability and nutrition of vegan cat food.
I provided.
show me some unfavourable ones then
But are they actually healthy and happy?
Yes.
if the food is palatable and nutritious one would image that they are.
Is the food palatable and nutritious?
there are ways to measure both.
What are the results of those measurements?
that the food is enjoyable.
regular.biscuits given to cats contain a lot of artificial flavours and vegetable matter already.
Let’s see it.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0253292
here is one study.
let me know what you think
deleted by creator
I don’t have a cat. But I do support reducing animal.abusr where possible.
Surely you can agree with that?
