Asking for moderator Rooki's removal for misconduct
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.
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.
This community is a joke, man. There’s zero feedback—at best, you're ignored, and at worst, you get banned from the whole instance without warning. The unnamed mods are running this place like it's their personal dictatorship, flexing their power at every turn and crushing anyone who steps out of line. It’s like we’re living in some twisted version of Reddit, but with an extra dose of authoritarianism.
The rest of mods? They just sit back, probably too busy admiring themselves or too clueless to care, letting everything spiral out of control. And that 1% of users pumping out 99.99% of the content? They’re just feeding the mods’ power trip (waiting for my coffee to get hot enough).
If you’re hoping for any sort of response or accountability, don’t bother—there’s zero feedback if you’re lucky, and an instant ban if you’re not. This whole community is a mess, but the LW instance? That’s even funnier, like a bad parody of a bad platform. It’s all just one big dumpster fire, and we’re stuck watching it burn.
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
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.
What the fuck is "vegan cat food"? I sometimes can't understand people.
Ok. I get it. As people, we are bad. We mass husbandry just for food, modifying them with artificial selection for productivity. So I can understand veganism (although I am not vegan).
But have we really reached the point where we stop animals from eating meat? Either I'm a bigoted idiot or people are out of their minds.
If I understood correctly.The purpose of this post is to draw attention to the lack of opportunity to discuss this topic, because the arguments of one side are moderated.
For me, the purpose of the post is exactly what it asks for. I don't think I've ever posted to !vegan except for today, to cross-post the OP, but my own fate as an active lemmy.world user likely rests on the outcome of this request. I run a tiny community that has no relation to animal rights or ethics but I feel it is absolutely threatened when there are moderators like Rooki that act based on their views rather than the rules.
Nobody is suggesting to stop animals in the wild eating meat or for incidental kills our furry companions make. Animals eat meat. It's natural. We breed animals as pets and feed them industrial amounts of food each year that we produce from other animals in very questionable ways. Not natural. The entire planet benefits from less meat being mass produced. It's not crazy to entertain some ideas that get us closer if they're proven equally nutritional.
It is about pets, which are domestic animals who eat what you feed them. Choosing brand X of pet food prevents your pet from eating brand Y, I suppose, but every pet owner has to make such choices. Plant-based diets start to look like just another choice.
You really can't stop cats from eating meat anyway, especially if you ever let them outside. They love to catch and eat mice, birds, and bugs, and they will do it no matter what pet food you might also give them.
Don't know about cats, but can answer from dog perspective - I imagine it might apply to cats as well. And this is a completely utilitarian answer: food alergies. Animals can have them.
We have a dog who is alergic to most if not all most common meat proteins - chicken, pork, beef, fish... didn't test all but you (and we) get the picture. Luckily, there are less common meat proteins (venison as one example) which he accepts just fine - but there was a distinct possibility he would not. So we would be faced with two options - buy him super expensive, ultra processed analergic food, or go for vegan options. If faced with this decision, I'd opt for option B for sure.
I know cats are seen as true carnivores and dogs are omnivores, but I think it applies to your question
That is not correct from a cat perspective. Dogs are not obligate carnivores. Cats are. What this means is that the amino acids that cats can't produce on their own are only available naturally from other animals. The amino acids that dogs don't produce on their own are available from vegan sources.
Hey, check it out! I was right in thinking that the studies indicating good outcomes for the pets were poorly structured.
We found that there has been limited scientific study on the impact of vegan diets on cat and dog health. In addition, the studies that have been conducted tended to employ small sample sizes, with study designs which are considered less reliable in evidence-based practice. Whilst there have been several survey studies with larger sample sizes, these types of studies can be subject to selection bias based on the disposition of the respondents towards alternative diets
There aren’t studies saying that it is dangerous for the pets, which is a little surprising to me. Long story short the jury’s still out. But IMO it is completely fine for the admins of an instance to come down firmly against potentially animal-abusive practices, just as they would against political misinformation or nonconsensual pornography or what have you, regardless of how much in favor of those things are the members of the community promoting it.
While the study is not conclusive, that does not mean it is not a significant and useful piece of evidence. Conducted fairly and with acknowledgement of its flaws, it should be taken into account over the use of a simple classification system describing animals in their natural habitats.
I disagree that the admins should be fine coming down on anything they perceive as potentially abusive practices, as I think that sets a bad overall precedent.
Science is a continuously evolving thing, by design, and there is nothing wrong with using the best information that we have available at any given time.
I think it’s funny that the vegan mods in question pivoted effortlessly from “this is our place, fuck you, you are banned, we’ll decide what is and isn’t allowed” to “halp halp they’re censoring me, what about my human rights, you can’t do this”
I fully support an admin stepping in to stop poorly researched pseudo science with an aura of fake legitimacy to be spread on Lemmy as a whole although I don't use (dot)World I still see your shit on my feed
Scientific fact: Cats are "Obligatory CARNIVORES" a step above "Just" carnivores.
I didnt banned them btw just demoted them as they advocated that vegan diet is good for cats. ( For Obligatory Carnivores )
Just for the nerds out there: YES a cat can survive if you add chemically everything to a brick, so in theory yes cats could "survive" but not thrive.
But straight up saying "Vegan diets for cats dont have any risks" is just straight up missinformation, and they just straight up removed anyone who pointed the risks out.
Saying that was ok, denying any risks and risking any pets life for the sake of internet points or your ideals is something different.
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.)
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.
I haven’t looked into this (nor will I), but if the situation is as described, I support revoking mod access. Let’s not discuss veganism, pet food, or other off-topic issues. The discussion is about mod behavior on Lemmy. If anyone wants to check user Rose’s claims and show up with receipts, that’d be appreciated, I think, by all.
This seems to be a situation where an instance admin (not a community moderator) stepped into a community (!vegan@lemmy.world), removed a bunch of "disinformation" comments, and de-modded some moderators who were letting the "disinformation" by. At issue was whether it is safe to feed cats a vegan diet. I did have to look into veganism and pet food to make sense of that. If there is universal agreement among scientists, veterinarians, and non-crazy vegans that any cat put on a vegan diet dies within 3 months, that's one thing, but the actual situation doesn't seem that severe. Rooki also seems to use non-standard terminology and incomplete descriptions in communicating their side of the issue.
Obligate or "true" carnivores are those whose diet requires nutrients found only in animal flesh in the wild... All wild felids, including feral domestic cats, require a diet of primarily animal flesh and organs... In captivity or domestic settings, obligate carnivores like cats and crocodiles can in principle get all their required nutrients from processed food made from plant and synthetic sources.[4][5]
Rooki uses the term "obligatory carnivore" (instead of the usual "obligate") and omits that the definition describes the diet only of wild animals, not captive ones. So Rooki's familiarity with this topic seems limited, and yet they use their admin flag to shut down discussion doesn't fit their opinion. Wikipedia's eponym for this type of participant is "Randy in Boise."
If this were a dispute between !vegan mods then that would be regular mod drama, but this seems to be from outside the community, not good. While Reddit often has bad moderators on large subs, one of its attractions to many users is unless you're discussing criminal or near-criminal conduct, you can generally start your own sub and moderate it however you want, with the admins staying out of your hair. The times they banned some subs that didn't reach that level created significant controversy even by non-supporters of those subs. If Lemmy is trying to present itself as an attractive alternative to Reddit, it should also take a light hand with internal community matters.
Overall I think it is best that instance admins stop interfering with discussions inside communities, unless there are serious conflicts with site policy. Could we imagine lemmy.world defederating another instance because its vegan community had a comment subthread about feeding a plant diet to your cat? Maybe so, but that doesn't speak well of lemmy.world, imho. Alternatively, if such discussions get shut down on lemmy.world but wouldn't get a different instance defederated, then lemmy.world stops being the "generic Lemmy server for everyone to use" that it advertises itself as. So it should leave those discussions alone, both on the local instance and on remote ones.
I won't weigh in on the request for Rooki's removal but I'd want Rooki and other admins to step away from this type of action, and I'd want the site poilcy (written or unwritten) to generally embrace this non-interference principle.
WP:UNINVOLVED is an internal Wikipedia policy about admin actions and as such, doesn't directly apply here, but it is something to consider in deciding how best to handle these issues.
The topic of discussion should be more about the Lemmy World admins being biased and overstepping their boundaries. You wouldn't suggest that minorities should just create their own country when they're being oppressed by the majority.
However this is precisely why the instances veganism social, vegan theory club and lemmy.vg exist.
vegantheoryclub.org is a vegan run instance that was created pretty much precisely because of shit like this.
I think it's worth communicating how this admin is using their powers, and to other people that the vegan community was taken over by an anti-vegan carnist for personal reasons. So that users can make up their minds over where they want to participate.
Outside of that I don't really care, I'm not optimistic they'll be reigned in and think lemmy.world is not a very well run server for reasons like this.
Yeah, but one of the admins there is the same way, and has directly used his admin position to ban people from the communities there based on unrelated matters on other instances. Hamid is worse than what this post is about.
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.
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.
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.