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
it still had rules about animal abuse, which this misinformation, had it actually been misinformation, would have lead to. while the removal reason could have been more clear, the justification was still covered by our ToS.
the additional rules provided more clarification on what we intend to achieve with them, but they would not be required. based on what we know today the removal was neither justified by the original ToS nor by the updated ones.
An instance moderator repeatedly cited a rule that was not in the ToS, then undid the damage a few days later also on the basis of "not missinformation". To me, that's a clear indication of what was on Rooki's mind at the moment.
Can you explain how "animal abuse" comes into the picture? Are you saying that if an instance moderator does something for a made-up reason that is not covered in the rules, the rest of the moderators still attempt to find a reason in the rules that sticks? Understood if so, but then which animal abuse rule are you talking about? Is it the one about the visual depiction of violent content, in the same paragraph as gore, dismemberment, and so on? How does that relate to cat food even remotely? I described it as a huge stretch in my "asking for removal" post and I still see it as a huge stretch. It's hard to understand why you would need to go for that unless trying to justify Rooki's actions which were completely unjustifiable from any angle.
The animal abuse alleged at the time was that there was supposedly no healthy vegan cat food.
While the section of the rules was the same (violent content), animal abuse was a separate sentence, not the one about visual depictions:
This is the exact same paragraph we have today and we had before these changes.
If there was no healthy vegan cat food then this would be considered content enabling animal abuse.
Still misleading, because that's not the reason given by Rooki in the moment or days later. You also can't chalk it up to poor communication, since there's absolutely no logical connection between "misinformation" and "animal abuse".
As for the violent content rule, taking just one sentence from it and ignoring the rest is also as good as moderator misconduct, because by that same wild logic, one could take any other sentence from the rules, ignore the context, and use it to justify anything. It's like saying that because the ToS contain "It offers something of value to our users.", anything of value is okay. You will say "but that's under Advertising", so that's exactly what I'm saying too: the part on animal abuse is under Violent Content, in the context of visual depictions or descriptions of violence, not on its own, so it must be examined within its context only.
Moreover, what you're arguing is like saying that if you had the same sentence read "No content depicting, promoting or enabling abuse", it would be abusive and against the rules to tell people that, for example, junk food is fine ("because there is no healthy junk food").