In my view as a long-time moderator, the purpose of moderation is conflict resolution and ensuring the sitewide rules are followed. As reported today by !vegan@lemmyworld, moderator Rooki’s vision appears to be that their personal disagreement with someone else’s position takes priority over the rules and is enough to remove comments in a community they don’t moderate, remove its moderators for the comments, and effectively resort to hostile takeover by posting their own comment with an opposing view (archived here) and elevating it for visiblity.
The removed comments relate to vegan cat food. As seen in the modlog, Rooki removed a number of pretty balanced comments explaining that while there are problematic ways to feed cats vegan, if done properly, cats can live on vegan cat food. Though it is a controversial position even among vegans, there is scientific research supporting it, like this review from 2023 or the papers co-authored by professor Andrew Knight. These short videos could also work as a TL;DR of his knowledge on the matter. As noted on Wikipedia, some of the biggest animal advocacy organizations support the notion of vegan cat food, while others do not. Vegan pet food brands, including Ami, Evolution Diet, and Benevo have existed for years and are available throughout the world, clearly not prohibited by law in countries with laws against animal abuse.
To summarize, even if you don’t agree with the position of vegan cat food being feasible, at the very least you have to acknowledge that the matter is not clear-cut. Moreover, there is no rule of lemmy.world that prohibits those types of conversations unless making a huge stretch to claim that it falls under violent content “promoting animal abuse” in the context of “excessive gore” and “dismemberment”.
For the sake of the argument, even if we assume that the truth is fully on Rooki’s side and discussions of vegan cat food is “being a troll and promoting killing pets”, the sitewide rules would have to be updated to reflect this view, and create a dangerous precedent, enabling banning for making positive comments about junk food (killing yourself), being parents who smoke (killing your kids), being religious “because it’s not scientific” and so on. Even reddit wouldn’t go that far, and there are plenty of conversations on vegan cat food on reddit.
Given Rooki’s behavior and that it has already resulted in forcing the vegan community out of lemmy.world and with more likely to follow, I believe the only right course of action is to remove them as a moderator to help restore the community’s trust in the platform and reduce the likelihood of similar events in the future.
Hi all,
For the sake of transparency, we are responding here, as remaining silent will also send a message to the community. We are actively reviewing all the information posted in this thread and all other linked sources. The entire team is being brought up to speed on the events that have taken place, but this process may take some time. We are all in different time zones, and many of us have professional and personal obligations that may take priority. Please bear with us, as there is a lot to review. We promise that after our review, we will respond to the community.
Thank you.
The FHF / LW Admin Team
Is this all over a disagreement on whether a cat can survive on a vegan diet?
You’re not fully representing the situation. They banned vegans moderators from their own community based on their disagreement with scientific fact.
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From a strictly scientific perspective, it is inappropriate to use where something fits into a recognized classification system as some indication of broader scientific fact. That’s an oversimplification that takes what is a simple teaching tool for lower-level science education that, by necessity, smooths over the details and nuance of our actual physical world, and tries to more broadly apply it to the actual practice of the science by specialists who actually work with that detail.
You cannot actually say that because something is classified as an obligate carnivore, it must consume meat to remain healthy. The classification system is too flawed for that, and exists merely to teach some basic principles in biology to new students. Our classification systems are not based in immutable fact and intended to be the end-all-be-all for drawing conclusions. Instead they are working tools with imperfections, designed for a specific teaching and communication purpose.
The fact of the matter is that a living organism requires certain chemical inputs, and if those inputs are provided, it can potentially remain healthy. If we simplified this down to some carnivorous bacterium, I think you could see a little more easily how we can very likely engineer around any classification of obligate carnivorousness if we so desired. It’s classification would not necessarily be accurate as described anymore, though that would not mean we should necessarily discard the system when it still serves a useful purpose for analyzing animals living within their natural habitats.
Thank you for your service.
Feeding your cat an artificial diet because of your own conviction is animal abuse. At a minimum it needs access to both vegan and carnivorous food, and make the choice itself.
Are there any cats in the wild that are vegan?
Are there any cats in the wild that are vegan?
No, because they must have meat to survive due to being obligate carnivores. This is different than dogs, which are omnivores.
Feeding your cat an artificial diet because of your own conviction is animal abuse.
“Artificial” gotta use the nature logical fallacy there huh. Kibble isn’t natural.
Plant-based kibble synthesized with taurine, b12 and vitamin a through reputable kibble can be just as tasty to a cat and research has shown cats on a plant-based diet are actually healthier.
Read the studies before you make emotional statements.
-https://sustainablepetfood.info/
-https://bmcvetres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12917-021-02754-8
-https://www.magonlinelibrary.com/doi/abs/10.12968/vetn.2022.13.6.252
-https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0253292
-https://www.mdpi.com/2306-7381/10/1/52
-https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0284132
-https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240584402411609X
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For one, I don’t see the moderators “denying any risks”. The very first one seen at the archived link and in the mod log says “There are some scammy and not nutritionally complete vegan cat foods or there, so it’s important to do a bit of extra research”.
Regardless of any of that, the job of an instance moderator isn’t to fight what they believe is misinformation, as that view leads to total censorship, as I already explained. What if you believe that abortion kills? Would you then go and remove moderators that say otherwise? The same question stands for the other examples provided in my OP.
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Yes, i wouldnt even stepped in if they didnt removed / added a warning about the risks of a vegan diet.
As a “clean” vegan diet without anything added to the food is poison for the cat as they are “Obligatory Carnivore” and need some Animal Proteins.
They wouldnt die immediatly but will cause malnutrition.
Wtf is a “clean” vegan diet?
Technically it’s not proteins, but specific amino acids (which, yes, are the building blocks of proteins). And amino acid deficiencies will absolutely kill cats. Many years ago my parents used to buy the cheapest garbage cat food available at the local grocery store. It was nutritionally deficient, and ended up killing our only cat that was strictly an indoor cat at the time. (I don’t allow any of my cats outside, because I don’t want them to be food for owls and coyotes.)
That is my understanding based on Rooki’s own post, the post of the demoted vegan mod, and the modlog containing the removed comments.
Here’s the thread (archive link) that the admin intervened in:
@naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com, cats CAN NOT survive for long with a vegan diet. Its dangerous for them. Cats are carnivores.
Please refrain from removing warnings about such dangerous facts. Everyone who killed their cats by doing so, have a nice rest of your life knowing you killed your loved pet.
p.s. yes i am a cat owner.
Edit: to the rest of the mods: Dont promote harmfull things for pets. @naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com and @Eevoltic are demoted.
If anyone else thinks pets should be vegan i have no problem banning them for being a troll and promoting killing pets.
Just that you heard it from me too: YES cats can survive vegan diet for few months but prolonged exposure and it gets harmful for the pet and even death.
Edit: This was in-between the comments by @Omniforous@mander.xyz being removed/restored
Also to add Rooki is an admin of LemmyWorld.
What the hell. There’s just a disagreement, no need to use admin override powers. Just let it be. Let them have their sub. It’s not like they’re recruiting for Al Qaeda.
I really don’t give a damn about this particular fight about cat food. But I do worry about admins or mods who can’t sometimes just let something slide. Like cops always looking to escalate
I’m just here for the comments.
While I agree that the behavior was problematic, I personally think a mature apology and acknowledgement that the science is not necessarily on his side would be a sufficient resolution, if it was offered openly and willingly.
Animal welfare is an understandably passionate topic, so I can empathize with a person’s feelings leading them to decide that what they were doing was necessary to protect the animals that they care about. Because the fundamental motive was a positive one, and only the chosen expression of this motive was poor conduct, I think redemption is a potentially viable path forward that may be preferable to harsher consequences. We could see this as an educational and growing opportunity, if we wished, and forgiveness has merits of its own when there is no genuine malice present.
I should probably disclose that I am not a member of that community, so I personally was not impacted by these actions and may be underestimating just how badly people feel about this all. Being myself an active carnivore that has been vegetarian in the past (well, pescatarian tbf) and having experience with both schools of thought though, I do feel like I can appreciate the thought-patterns that led both sides to their chosen actions.
When it comes to disagreements of that nature (and again, even if we assume that the science were on Rooki’s side), the right course of action in my view is to make an opposing comment and make your case, then if that’s unfairly removed by the community mods, create your own community (it could be another version of vegan or “anti-vegan” depending on where you stand) and use that to express the opposing views. Resorting to your admin power is completely unacceptable for a case of disagreement that is not related to a rules violation.
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Stop whining that people don’t approve of you abusing your pets. Rooki did nothing wrong, they’re just fighting vegan disinformation that harms pets
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CMV: behind "the_donald” subs, the next worst community to engage with is vegans. And as a Linux user, there’s not a shortage of trash communities I could have chosen from.
I hear chuds bitching about vegans way more than I the opposite.
I’m not even vegan or vegetarian, but the amount of bullshit whining and jokes about vegans by dipshits online is so fucking annoying.
I swear it’s a psy-op by big beef lol
Vegans are the second most hated group after people with substance disorders in the United States.
The bigotry towards either group is completely nonsensical as they’re often been misunderstood by the general public because the mainstream media is failing to properly cover them to favour the viewpoints of animal agriculture and the war on drugs.
I ask you to listen to these people directly about their stories.
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You better not talk to your mother with that mouth.
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Rooki needs to held accountable for being subjective and for an abuse of power.
To what account? They are an instance admin, everyone is below them.
I’m not siding with anyone in this case, but the fact is it is a core feature of the fediverse: admins rule supreme and are only accountable to other admins. If users or communities don’t like it, they could, and SHOULD move to another instance. If a suitable one is not available, they should make their own, and rule it as they please.
It doesn’t mean people shouldn’t try to improve their original Lemmy home before moving to other instances.
There’s nothing to prove. It’s in their nature.
This is like the scorpion and the frog story.
Going by this Lemmy.World chart, Rooki is an instance moderator standing below @ruud@lemmy.world and @jelloeater85@lemmy.world, so I’m appealing to them in the form of a public post so that the issue can’t be swept under the rug.
If users or communities don’t like it, they could, and SHOULD move to another instance.
!vegan are already going for that option, but the problem is that if your written rules do not reflect your actual practices, it’s a lot like backstabbing because you invite people to build communities over time only to go back on your rules and force the users to migrate, which leads to fragmentation and a lot of members lost in the process.
Just wanted to mention we are still working on a official response.
Agree, great points.
I’m chiming in in this thread in a pretty anti authority way because I’ve experienced issues with admins on several instances doing just as you say: not playing by the rules they have laid out.
It’s frustrating but ultimately it’s their house. We’re just squatting.
I’m seconding this motion.
