Update to Terms of Service + New Bylaws (Protections for users) - eviltoast

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 👈

        • ✺roguetrick✺@lemmy.world
          62·
          3 months ago

          If you read what the vegans said, they pretty much echoed exactly what was on that site. “It’s hard, it’s likely not worth it, it requires cooperation with your vet, it’s possible.”

          • TexMexBazooka@lemm.ee
            55·
            3 months ago

            Reading the website, the message is pretty clearly “don’t fucking do this but if you do you have to go to a professional.”

            And your cat will still feel like shit

            Another fun note, the only sources for that article are over 20 years old with the exception of one in like 2013 titled:

            ‘Homemade dog food recipes can be a risky business, study finds’ (15 July 2013)

            …yyyeeeeaaaahhhh

              • TexMexBazooka@lemm.ee
                58·
                3 months ago

                “But what about this biased source!”

                Nah…. I did skim it though, and the conclusion doesn’t actually provide anything solid other than “regular commercial food also bad”

                Really my take away from all of this to is to stop buying cat food and start bringing home rodents and birds for them to chow down on.

                • ✺roguetrick✺@lemmy.world
                  111·
                  3 months ago

                  Since it’s a literature review, it’s actually many sources with some not supporting the position and extensively cited. I figured since you seem to have problems with information coming from industry experts who are literally in charge of pet food formulation because they don’t have enough citations, that would do it for you. Just kidding, I knew you wouldn’t bother reading it.

                  I’m not a vegan and largely think the effort in creating a highly processed cat food with synthetic taurine and supplemented essential amino acid and essential fatty acids is a waste of money. But being smugly ignorant of the fact that it’s not only quite possible to do that and it is currently being done is overall more contemptible to me.

                  Anyway here’s a review from different sources.

                  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9860667/

                  This review has found that there is no convincing evidence of major impacts of vegan diets on dog or cat health.

                  • TexMexBazooka@lemm.ee
                    14·
                    3 months ago

                    Good morning! I figured I’d pop in and see just how silly you made yourself look. Here we go:

                    heavy sigh

                    Vegans be reposting this link everywhere not realizing how silly it makes them look. First, one of the first points it makes is that there hasn’t been much research done into feeding cats vegan diets, mostly because it’s a bad idea.

                    Some great lines:

                    Cats on a high-protein vegetarian diet exhibited hypokalemia which accompanied recurrent polymyopathy. There was also increased creatinine kinase activity, likely reflecting the muscle damage caused by the myopathy, and reduced urinary potassium concentrations.

                    To simplify: even with protein supplements your cats muscles will decay over time.

                    showed that plasma taurine concentrations decreased by approximately 87% after only 2 weeks on a vegetarian diet (from 122 μmol/L to 16μmol/L). By the end of the 6-week study, there was no detectable taurine in plasma. Taurine concentrations were not different between the potassium-supplemented and non-supplemented groups, with both groups showing this substantial drop in taurine.

                    To simplify: Supplements didn’t work. Though findings are mixed between all like, 3 studies that tried

                    In cats fed vegetarian diets that were supplemented with potassium, a myopathy was seen within 2 weeks of the dietary change this was characterized by ventroflexion of the head and the neck. The cats also showed lateral head resting, a stiff gait, muscular weakness, unsteadiness, and the occasional tremor of the head and pinnae.

                    To simplify: your cat feels like shit and acts like they feel like shit

                    Weight loss and poor coat condition have also been observed in cats fed vegetarian diets. However, most cats in another study had a normal coat condition and no obviously diet-related clinical abnormalities picked up by clinical examination [27]. Clinical signs of lethargy with altered mentation, dysorexia, and muscle wasting, along with gut signs of bloating and increased borborygmi have also been observed [30].

                    Simplify: it was bad. Sometimes it wasn’t so bad, but lots of times it was bad and the owner should feel bad

                    I can keep going, literally every paragraph has some good “don’t fucking do that” material.

      • rekorse@lemmy.world
        825·
        3 months ago

        Apparently that organization in your link has no issue advising its possible to have a healthy vegan/vegetarian diet. Guess they aren’t afraid people will kill their cats over it.