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.

👉 https://lemmy.world/post/19264848 👈

  • MrPoopyButthole@lemmy.world
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    22 days ago

    Oh man this ones got some flavour to sink ones teeth into 😅

    I take the side of the admin. If someone can’t accept or understand that a cat eats a meat based diet then they deserve to have reality thrown in their face. Better than some poor animals being tortured.

  • Aielman15@lemmy.world
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    22 days ago

    Respectfully, I believe this incident serves more as a learning opportunity for the admin team rather than a reason to amend the rules.

    This isn’t the first time I’ve observed Rooki acting inappropriately for an admin of a community. As an admin of a (admittedly much smaller) corner of the internet, I’ve learned to interact with users in a way that is polite and ensures they feel safe and heard. This is at least the second instance where I’ve seen Rooki respond emotionally and rather adversarially towards users, which has, in my view, undermined their credibility, to the point that I hope to avoid future interactions with them.

    I understand that managing LW, one of the largest and general-purpose instances, especially with Lemmy’s still rather limited moderation tools, is challenging, and I appreciate the hard work all of you, including Rooki, put into maintaining it and making it run as smoothly as it does. I’m NOT asking for their removal; however, considering that this is not the first time I’ve seen Rooki behave uncivilly and antagonistically towards users, I hope that this will be a formative experience for them.

    (Edit for clarity)

  • fine_sandy_bottom@lemmy.federate.cc
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    22 days ago

    It’s great that the admins are putting so much effort into getting this right.

    Sadly, I don’t think this is the way. Adding this to the ToS means you admins will always be in the centre of every unwinnable situation that arises.

    You need a committee to deal with these issues on a case by case basis. There are many advantages to this:

    • You can be tough but flexible and adaptive
    • you can enlist the help of people with more time
    • you can enlist the help of people with experience writing policies
    • committee members can resign or be discontinued when they become embroiled in some shit storm.
    • you can retain veto power

    I don’t want to be critical of the ToS because someone has put a lot of thought into it, but the most charitable thing I can say is that its unlikely to serve its intended purpose.

    • graphene@lemm.ee
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      21 days ago

      An arbitration committee you say? This is giving me Wikipedia vibes.

  • TexMexBazooka@lemm.ee
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    21 days ago

    Walk into a vet office and tell them you want your cat to eat a vegan diet and watch their eyes roll at the speed of sound out of their skull

    • telllos@lemmy.world
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      19 days ago

      There are enough pets with a vegan diet to chose from. Why pick a cat if it’s important to you. People really are out of their mind.

    • rekorse@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      Ive done just this. They were very supportive in the attempt, despite it ultimately not working out.

      Also, not working out doesnt mean a dead cat. It meant she didnt like the taste of it so I switched back to food she would eat, with meat in it.

      She actually did like the vegan kibble but she’s a majority wet food eater and didnt like the vegan wet food.

      Lemmy.world is not real life, its a shit posting board.

      • Ledivin@lemmy.world
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        17 days ago

        Also, not working out doesnt mean a dead cat. It meant she didnt like the taste of it so I switched back to food she would eat, with meat in it.

        I’m glad you aren’t insane (really - I might think you’re crazy for trying, but thank you for seeing reason when it didn’t work out), but you have to understand that some people are. They will literally starve their pet out of their own foolish ideals.

      • EnderMB@lemmy.world
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        16 days ago

        Your post shouldn’t be downvoted. This is without question the best way to deal with this - speak to someone that not only knows about this stuff, but likely deals with it on a regular basis. They are LITERALLY FUCKING TRAINED TO DEAL WITH THIS!

      • TexMexBazooka@lemm.ee
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        19 days ago

        Also, not working out doesnt mean a dead cat. It meant she didnt like the taste of it

        She actually did like the vegan kibble but she’s a majority wet food eater and didnt like the vegan wet food.

        Pick one

  • RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world
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    22 days ago

    As a former site admin, I will say right now that leaving any kind of rule “open to interpretation” is the WORST thing you could do. The only interpretation of the rules of your site should be the your (the site admin’s) interpretation. That’s it. Rules should be easy to understand and easily convey the correct interpretation.

    Leaving the rules open to interpretation only leads to disagreements and arguments. It is better for users to have concrete rules with a reliably consistent correct interpretation than for everyone to complain because their interpretation of a rule lets them do whatever they want. Just my two cents on that.

    • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
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      22 days ago

      As a former site admin, I will say right now that leaving any kind of rule “open to interpretation” is the WORST thing you could do. The only interpretation of the rules of your site should be the your interpretation. That’s it. Rules should be easy to understand and easily convey the correct interpretation.

      This might be a language-barrier thing, but that’s the meaning of “open for interpretation”.

      It means that the admins and moderators are judging it on a per-case basis instead of a hard delineation that anybody could use to decide whether something is against the rules or not (and hence use technicalities to skirt the rules, naturally).

      • dustyData@lemmy.world
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        We didn’t cover that in ESL, because open to interpretation means open to interpretation. If what you’re trying to say in your comment was the admins intention then the language should’ve been: “Admin’s interpretation of the rules is the last word and will be judged in a case by case basis”. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s how laws and court systems work. Anyone can interpret laws as they see fit (see sov citizens) but when push come to shove, judges have the last word and the courts interpretation is the only valid interpretation of the law. Hence debate based trials, checks and balances. When rules are open to interpretation, they become useless as a tool for defining truth.

        • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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          21 days ago

          because open to interpretation means open to interpretation

          And most people understands when a company says that. They mean:

          “Admin’s interpretation of the rules is the last word and will be judged in a case by case basis”.

          It’s just understood that a company always means “we can do what we want, deal with it”.

          • dustyData@lemmy.world
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            21 days ago

            But this is not a company. What are you talking about?

            But in a real sense, yes, the admins can do whatever they want. We as users have no power or recourse. They could just turn off the server tomorrow and that’s that.

  • auzy@lemmy.world
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    21 days ago

    The biggest issue with Reddit and Facebook was that they let stuff like this stick around it and eventually consume it.

    It’s a good policy imho, and I’m happy to see it

    Science should prevail

    • samus12345@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      Because the priority for them is engagement, regardless of how harmful the content could be to people. Engagement doesn’t mean shit here because nobody’s profiting off of it.

      • auzy@lemmy.world
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        21 days ago

        I think initially it was simply because Ellen pao might have wanted freedom of speech. The funny thing is that the people she defended turned against her

        But this turned into an issue eventually Steve seemed to get rid of some communities, and allowed places like thedonald to flourish. I believe he just wants money.

        So you could be right

        • vxx@lemmy.world
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          There’s not much doubt left in me that spez wasn’t at a wild party that resulted in him doing what the videographer wanted.

      • Serinus@lemmy.worldM
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        21 days ago

        we surveyed 1,418 cat guardians, asking about one cat living with them, for at least one year.

        I believe this study. It’s true that vegans say their vegan cats are healthier than other cats.

      • ellabee@sh.itjust.works
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        21 days ago

        quoting from your link: No reductions were statistically significant. Only one difference [re:disease] was statistically significant.

        plus it was done by a pro-vegan group with obvious bias. so the results from the pro-vegan funded study are not terribly good at supporting veganism for cats as more healthy. it’s about the same, maybe less disease (severity of disease wasn’t covered in the abstract but would be a significant part of a decision). show me a study not funded by a pro-vegan group with similar or better results before I consider feeding my pet a diet very different from their natural diet.

        • leds@feddit.dk
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          21 days ago

          Yeah like I said not the best science (maybe 99% of cats on vegan diet die the first day and the remaining 1% is slightly healthier).

          But the point is that there is science

          So are admins going to do literature reviews and have panels to discuss or just follow their own biases when deleting comments?

          Do users need to publish a peer reviewed meta study before they are allowed to comment?

        • rekorse@lemmy.world
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          21 days ago

          All studies on this will either be funded for or against it. You can’t just claim bias cause you connected a pair of dots in your head.

          The same logic would disqualify papers that support your opinion too, as they are funded by companies that make money from selling meat.

      • skeletorfw@lemmy.world
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        21 days ago

        Honestly (and I see you do recognise this in your comment) but this really seems like a kinda crappy study that I’m surprised made it into plos.

        For instance I couldn’t find any evidence of them considering that the dietary choices of the guardian may affect the attitudes of the guardian to vetenarians (and thus the self-reported health of those animals). To take this further, in the scenario that a cat guardian believes their choices make their cat healthier, especially when going against vetinary orthodoxy, the guardian is probably less likely to take the cat to the vet for minor issues. This confounds the analysis of “healthiness” as performed by the authors.

        Furthermore any cat that is not an indoor cat is likely also not fed a purely vegan diet (as they do hunt), so they should possibly account for that via a sort of bootstrapped approach. Generally the stats were okay though, and don’t make super strong claims from some pretty weak data. Though GAMs were a pretty odd choice and I’d have preferred some sort of explicit model fit with Bayesian fitting or NLLS.

        In the end all of this points to the sort of thing where they should really have been doing perturbational research. I.e. feeding cats different diets in a controlled lab space. This is not the sort of research that lends itself to surveys and that seriously impacts the actual practicality of its findings.

        Also as an aside, I really cannot abide anyone who includes a questionably inspirational quote that they said themselves in the fucking French Alps on their own website. That’s just pure wankery. The only people I usually see doing things like that are scientists like Trivers, which is not company one should wish to be in.

        • merthyr1831@lemmy.ml
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          20 days ago

          This is the limitation with policy made by people who just think “science” is when you quote an opinion with an article in a journal.

          Decades of climate denialism, anti-veganism, and “race science” is perfectly acceptable under these rules because you could simply post studies funded by Exxon, meat and dairy lobbyists, and right-wing think-tanks which support their conclusion.

          “Science should prevail” nerds could do well to consider that perhaps we have other means of identifying malicious behaviour. Any kind of checkbook exercise or algorithm that can pluck truth out of the air won’t work; the scientific method was never intended to declare X or Y as permanent facts the way we use it online.

          • skeletorfw@lemmy.world
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            20 days ago

            I’m sorry, I’m confused here. I’m obviously all against race science and greenwashing, but I was talking about the quoted study in my post.

            That aside, it definitely is good to have more people talking about the inherent subjectivity and impermanence of science though!

      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        20 days ago

        lets say hypothetically your pet cat would be healthier and happier if you bypassed their stomach and digestive system entirely to simply feed them the required nutrients by direct injection. (doesn’t matter how this is done, it’s a hypothetical.)

        Let’s just say for the sake of the argument this is a magic black box that infinitely produces these nutrients and injects them at no immediate or long term cost. It consumes no power, doesn’t require charging or reloading, it simply makes it so that your cat no longer has to eat.

        Would this be ethical? We do a similar thing with humans on life support, and there’s lots of debate about this being highly unethical. There’s lot of push for medically assisted suicide/death in cases where it would be prudent.

  • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.ml
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    22 days ago

    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?

  • Rose@lemmy.world
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    21 days ago

    As noted in my post on the “moderation incident”, by adding more subjectivity to the rules, you are opening the door to even more instance moderator misconduct. There is already evidence of how that would go.

    Rooki felt it right to intervene in the !vegan cat food thread (and got a pat on the back with the new rules made to justify their actions), then not only took no issue with comments like “Meat is not something diabetics need to worry about.” but also fueled the fire in the same thread by saying “To be honest linking something like meat to death of people is like saying everybody that breathed air died.”

    So much for taking action against harmful dietary advice.

    • fine_sandy_bottom@lemmy.federate.cc
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      21 days ago

      I think this raises some good points.

      I get that admins are doing their best, but what’s really needed is a policy guiding admin behaviour. Under what circumstances will admins intervene, and what decision process will they follow to determine what interventions they will implement.

      Without that, I’m afraid updating the ToS to green light the behaviour of admins retrospectively is just going to cause more frustration and resentment for everyone.

    • nl4real@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      I love how the same groupthink from Reddit like “vegans bad” made it way over here verbatim, to the point where an admin goes out of their way to censor them. I don’t have a dog in this fight, but this was some blatant bias.

      • Rose@lemmy.world
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        21 days ago

        I’m pretty much a reddit refugee in that my reddit activity is limited to checking the community I moderate, simply as a token to all the users, but as I noted in that post, even reddit doesn’t seem to interfere in its communities unless pushed to do so by all the other communities. The “free speech absolutist” straw man also hardly applies to reddit, as it still takes action against harassment, illegal content, and things like that - exactly what I would expect from a platform like Lemmy.

      • 🦄🦄🦄@feddit.org
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        21 days ago

        The real interesting thing is that just ~14 months ago this wasn’t the case. Anti-Vegans and a shift to more right wing “opinions” sadly go hand in hand.

        • RunawayFixer@lemmy.world
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          Lemmy is still very left though, even when not federated with the tankiest instances. My impression is that it’s not an influx of more right leaning people, but rather that the increased popularity brought in a wider audience, which also brought in more people who are unwilling to consider or respect alternate viewpoints, no matter how well argued or founded those opinions are.

          I read a post by a vegan in this thread who wanted to try a vegan diet for their cat, so they went to the vet for a plan, tried that vet approved plan, but their cat didn’t like the food so they switched back. Imo perfectly reasonable and well argumented, no risk or harm to the kitten at all, and yet massive downvotes.

    • j4k3@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      I’ve had similar with Rooki showing a distinct lack of depth and level headedness. I left here entirely for a month as a result of an interaction with them.

      Seeing how this post is playing out seems insane to me. People may not like some aspect of this idea, but when presented with evidence, the response here has been eye opening an almost evangelical fervor with many that seem wholly incapable of objective thinking. I have not seen a single person claim they have tried feeding a cat a vegan diet, or that it is a good idea. All that I’ve seen is people mentioning in abstract that this has been researched. Hell, many things in common foods are derived from petroleum. Go watch Nile Red. Anything can about be made into anything, insert drain cleaner to grape soda here. I have no interest in eating crickets, meal worms, or algae, but these are a thing too. When I’m confronted with something new, I set myself aside and do not cast my emotions into the fray like an ignorant foolish child.

      There is nothing special about murder diets. It is just organic chemistry. It may cost a fortune for someone to properly feed a cat, but I have no faith that the largely unregulated in practice pet food industry is much better or more ethical than someone doing proper scientific research. Mentioning the frontiers of science and causing a pitchfork mob like post shows I’m probably in the wrong kind of place here. I have far higher expectations for intellectual engagement than this disappointing display of biased and backwards ignorance.

      • Rose@lemmy.world
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        21 days ago

        If you’re talking about the upvotes and the supportive comments, I’m not even sure they reflect how the community would feel had they seen the full sequence of events* leading up to that decision.

        As I previously mentioned, seemingly the first comment to start the chain of !vegan moderators’ and subsequent Rooki actions was the impolite “don’t force your shit on them” one-line comment by a user first exonerated, but later banned for trolling in another community by none other than Rooki.

        The vegan comments were way lengthier, containing balanced (“it’s important to do a bit of extra research”, “cat nutrition is too complicated to be trying to make at home”) and seemingly thoughtful takes with a link to the NCBI.

        Conversely, Rooki’s line of arguing contained little but outbursts like “have a nice rest of your life knowing you killed your loved pet” and “If anyone else thinks pets should be vegan i have no problem banning them for being a troll and promoting killing pets”, with unsubstantiated yet specific claims like “YES cats can survive vegan diet for few months”.

        Sure, Rooki admitted to being emotional and said sorry after my post asking for their removal, but what’s the weight of that apology if the new rules echo those same talking points, from “misinformation” to the quite specific example “Unhealthy diets, e.g. due to insufficient nutrients”?

        *Screenshots sent to me by a !vegan mod after my post - verifiable via the public modlog.

        • j4k3@lemmy.world
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          21 days ago

          I saw the original post too, and thought it was mildly interesting objective research with intelligent perspective and dialog, like one of the few actually good posts.

          I’ve got two cats, and I would never consider doing this, but I’m not dumb enough to claim to be some expert with ontological godlike knowledge of feline nutrition like I just watched a musical or David Attenborough.

          I’m not here to bash on Rooki or gang up on them. All I have to say is that they had a negative impact on me in the past, and I find this post’s comments rather pathetic in many respects.

          There is absolutely nothing wrong with someone that should not be playing the face of public interaction admitting so and limiting engagement or moving on to find things that are a better fit. Some people have a harder time separating themselves from objective thinking. Like I can be super opinionated and hyperbolic, but if I act as a mod, I’m a totally different person. I strongly believe any visible mod is a bad mod. A good mod is an invisible janitor and a servant of the community. I’ve told other mods here and elsewhere, I won’t even take mod action if I am personally involved in an issue. I contact another mod to take care of the situation as they see fit. For me, that includes stepping down if they ask and I have no qualms about saying that openly and honestly. I’m only a mod to herd bots and defuse the situation. As a person, I can feel strongly and be vocal, but as an authority, I have an obligation to be conservative and step very lightly. Some people can’t speak quietly when they hold a big stick, but that is a requirement to lead well.

          • Blaze@feddit.org
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            21 days ago

            A good mod is an invisible janitor and a servant of the community.

            Well put

          • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
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            20 days ago

            Great advice. Although many small communities’ only mod is also naturally their most active member; however, I still think one should “speak quietly” (or dare I say, “act moderately”) when it comes to topics that can get heated.

            Verbose but not outspoken? Anyway, you get the vibe

    • AhismaMiasma@lemm.ee
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      This is not the first time Rooki has emotionally pushed their own agenda in the face of criticism. Rooki seems to very much want to tell others exactly how to think.

      They should stick to programming as they are NOT a good fit for Admin.

        • catloaf@lemm.ee
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          19 days ago

          Hey look I’m famous!

          Also I got banned from that community today for being critical of the bot.

      • Rose@lemmy.world
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        20 days ago

        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.

  • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
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    19 days ago

    While I disagree with the stance the vegans took in this. The mods admins reaction to the situation was way out of proportion, and it definitely seems like you’re updating the ToS to justify what he did retroactively instead of addressing his behavior, which was way out of line.

      • RunawayFixer@lemmy.world
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        19 days ago

        I wasn’t party to it from the start since I’m not a vegan and I didn’t see the original discussion, but from my understanding: Vegans were having a discussion on the possibilities and risks of vegan cat food, in the vegan community Lemmy world. A Lemmy world admin invaded that discussion and started using his admin/mod powers to push his unsubstantiated opinion on the subject and silence the voice of users who had another opinion. And now apparently there’s new rules being added to justify that kind of admin behaviour.

        And this is also apparently not the first time that that admin abused their mod powers, since I read a few comments in this thread saying something like “oh, an admin abusing mod powers, that’s probably going to be xxx again”.

      • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
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        19 days ago

        You can literally go read what he did. I’m not going to have the same debate here that they had over in the vegan community thread.

  • Snapz@lemmy.world
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    21 days ago

    Don’t feel there are many people who actually use the phrase “free speech absolutist” these days, as a forward self-identification, who have much personal integrity or actual understanding of what that phrase might mean.

    • BlanketsWithSmallpox@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      It means they want the right to spew misinformation knowingly or otherwise and not get in trouble for it.

      I’m of the opinion that people attempting ‘legitimate’ claims on unsourced dangerous posts should be stamped out with impunity regardless of a forum being more free speech.

      It’s one thing to say you believe this despite insufficient evidence. It’s another thing to willingly present near universally incorrect information as truth just because one study might call it into question.

      We learned a near decade ago now that deplatforming hate speech, dangerous rhetoric, and misinformation stops it in it’s tracks.

      If you want to share your bullshit with other people you know in your heart of hearts is wrong, go to Signal lol.

      No disrespect to Signal. They have a place as a secure messaging that’s mostly by invite only for those groups. Not publicly viewable forums.

      https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07524-8

      https://www.npr.org/2021/01/25/960466075/is-deplatforming-enough-to-fight-disinformation-and-extremism

      The FBI and governments don’t try to shut down these places for no reason lol.

      • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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        21 days ago

        I agree, and also of the opinion that a significant portion of people who yell the loudest about “freedom of speech” are only doing so because they want to force others to listen to what is essentially bullshit, and any attempts to call them out is somehow impinging on a non-existent right to free speech. And I do hope it’s understood that there is no right to free speech other than pertaining to the government; mods and site operators are free to edit, block, delete or silence as they see fit no matter what we think. However, I do agree there is some form of social contract to at least enforce a perceived right to free speech in society.

        Personally, I have become intolerant of intolerance - especially of the kind that believes it has the right to spew what is objectively bullshit.

        • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          20 days ago

          Personally, I have become intolerant of intolerance - especially of the kind that believes it has the right to spew what is objectively bullshit.

          that makes sense, given the pardox of tolerant societies exists.

          You have to be intolerant of some level of intolerance otherwise your society is no longer tolerant, it’s that simple.

      • Carrolade@lemmy.world
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        20 days ago

        We learned a near decade ago now that deplatforming hate speech, dangerous rhetoric, and misinformation stops it in it’s tracks.

        Uh … source? Really not sure what world you’re living in, but I’m living in one with covid conspiracy theories.

        • BlanketsWithSmallpox@lemmy.world
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          20 days ago

          Carrolade

          Uh … source? Really not sure what world you’re living in, but I’m living in one with covid conspiracy theories.

          Are you really fucking asking for sauce when there’s two literally already in the comment and somehow got two other people to agree with you lol?

          • Carrolade@lemmy.world
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            20 days ago

            Yea neither of those says anything got anywhere near stopped in its tracks. Slowing the spread on the one platform where accounts were removed is not terribly impressive. lol?

    • Wilzax@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      I’m a free speech absolutist, but only for “Free as in free beer”, and “speech as in Oscar acceptance speech”. Don’t let people charge to hear what they have to say, and start loudly playing music over them if they go on too long

    • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      20 days ago

      free speech absolutism is the same as any other absolutism, it’s silly and likely not going to work very well.

      Free speech absolutists just think that being an asshole harassing people and lying is socially acceptable if they so desired.

  • ✺roguetrick✺@lemmy.world
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    22 days ago

    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.

  • solrize@lemmy.world
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    22 days ago

    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?

  • Dan68@lemmy.world
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    21 days ago

    I’m glad to see site-wide action taken against the spread of harmful disinformation.

  • EnderMB@lemmy.world
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    22 days ago

    It’s not the same thing, but IMO the best things the admins can do is establish a runbook of sorts of how to deal with these situations - because they’re not out of the realms of possibility.

    Where I disagree with some is in the rules needing to be black and white. There are instances, say for example a self-harming support group or a community that deals with conditions with no medical cure. IMO this is where nuance is key, because people will share misinformation or procedures that could cause harm/illness. This is where a case by case basis is needed, and ultimately the “path of least harm” is where this will excel. Regardless, admins and mods should contribute to these runbooks for their case, so that there is an established plan that is transparent to all.