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Update to Terms of Service + New Bylaws (Protections for users) - Lemmy.World
lemmy.worldHey 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/tos/#80-misinformation]
https://legal.lemmy.world/bylaws/ [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 [https://lemmy.world/post/19264848] 👈
Previous Hexbear post on this issue by @ButtBidet@hexbear.net
READ THE STUDY!
FFS don’t skim the study. 3% of non vegan cats had kidney problems, 4% of vegan cats did.
So you’re saying that vegan cats had roughly the same health as non vegan cats and we’re not destroying our planet in industrial livestock murder. Sounds great!
I know it’s just the typical denial from non-vegans, but it really surprises me to see such extreme pushback on the idea that we could make vegan catfood. I used to be really skeptical years ago (before I was even a communist), but learning that we already synthesize the meat-exclusive nutrients cats need to add it to normal cat food evaporated most of that previous skeptcism pretty much immediately. I honestly think 1 study is enough in this case and more rigorous studies should just be done on vegan cat food brands to ensure they’re being honest (because god knows it would be impossible to get 99% of governments to actually step in and properly regulate it cause they dont even really do that for normal petfoods)
(for clarity I am not vegan but I do consider myself a vegan sympathizer if that makes any sense at all)
No need to shout. I did.
No. That is not what the study is saying. The study is saying that “we took a look, and couldn’t tell if there was a difference or not.” Which is understandable, given the methodology. Internet-based questionnaires/surveys are easy to conduct, but tend to have big error bars. It’s a common trade-off made when first beginning to investigate a hypothesis.
It’s your typical “absence of evidence” versus “evidence of absence” conundrum. The authors note this in their comments on the limitations of their study and on avenues for further research:
Comrade, I’m not trying to argue that cats are “obligate carnivores,” or that cats should or should not have vegan diets. I’m not arguing about whether or not cats can meet their nutritional needs from vegan diets. I am only stating that the particular study linked does not provide any usable evidence in support of a conclusion. That’s literally what “no reductions were statistically significant” means: that the collected data is not sufficient to draw reliable conclusions.
Other studies may very well have more rigorous methodologies that convincingly demonstrate the nutritional completeness of vegan diets for cats. But not this study.
eh i disagree. if we generally know what is in meat that cats need that isn’t in plants, and we already do synthesize it to put it in normal cat food to enrich it, I don’t think we need super rigorous studies about vegan diets in general, just on the specific brands of vegan cat food to try and catch companies who aren’t properly enriching the vegan food. I think if there was something else major in meat that we were missing this study would have shown it.
That’s fair enough. Not all nutrient deficiencies have acute presentations, and the seven indicators of illness may not account for all the ways nutrient deficiencies could present, but if the crowd shrieking about animal cruelty was right in its hyperbolic hypothesis, then it would be likely for at least one of those seven indicators to get tripped.
FYI I have no patience for non-vegans concern trolling vegan issues. If you’re actively harming sentient animals, your opinion is clouded by your own guilt. Apologies in advance if you happen to be vegan.
I don’t know why you’re so concerned about my taking my ending summary, out of context, when I wrote paragraphs summarising the lit review and minor differences in kidney issues with non vegan vs vegan cats.
Science doesn’t speak in absolutes expect in maths. If you read anything outside of the abstract, you’d see that there’s a few other existing studies that support it, no studies claim the opposite, and further research should be done as in all medical research of this type.
No kidding. No if only the “cats must eat meat” side had this sorta need for rigorous methodology.