Update to Terms of Service + New Bylaws (Protections for users) - Lemmy.World
lemmy.world
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/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] 👈
  • NaevaTheRat [she/her]@vegantheoryclub.orgEnglish
    8·
    3 months ago

    I have thoughts so strap in. This is a bit of a rant trigger for me.

    Food is awesomely important to humans. Every culture I have looked at (layperson, not anthropologist so there’s that) has some sort of food-hospitality ritual. Festivities have particular foods associated with them, you eat and drink certain things at weddings, funerals, birthdays, season changes, whatever. In houses it is often the kitchen which becomes the center of activity and socialisation. Food is probably involved to some degree in the vast majority of good memories you have, from meals with family, self indulgence after a hard or stressful day, meetings with friends, celebrations of achievement etc.

    This isn’t that surprising, we are meat and it needs sustaining. A huge amount of effort in any individual’s life goes into securing and eating food.

    But if you’re the kind of person that doesn’t view the world through a systemic lens, that looks at structural issues and ideological hegemony as a series of individual moral failings. Well someone raising veganism is obviously doing so to say that you are a bad person and you should feel guilty about all of your good memories. You see this shit directly, people constantly accuse vegans of having moral superiority complexes and wanting to shame people. Research says people vastly overestimate how negatively vegans judge non vegans. Antivegans also conveniently forget that almost every single vegan was non-vegan and thus was complicit in carnism until they were given the chance to change by someone else’s advocacy and education.

    Generally the data say that people who anticipate negative judgement less from vegans are more likely to rate vegans as more moral/more positively. Notably this is true even in the absence of any actual interactions. The lashing out is massively driven by a guilt complex caused by a garbage understanding of how human societies and systemic evil actually work.

    • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      5·
      3 months ago

      This makes me wonder if there is an approach to selling veganism that offers the same approach marxism makes when it comes to socialism - not being a moralist about it. I suspect selling to those people would be more effective without the preconceived beliefs they have about vegans and moral judgement. Maybe a specific spinoff branch of veganism without the name vegan, named intentionally to get people to ask what it is. It would potentially enable a foot in the door because it wouldn’t trigger the reactions.

      • NaevaTheRat [she/her]@vegantheoryclub.orgEnglish
        6·
        3 months ago

        Idk, figure out how to make yourself vegan and get back to me with what opened your mind?

        My experience was studying/working in ag and packing chickens I loved into crates to go be murdered triggering a lifetime of guilt and a slowly narrowing list of people it was acceptable to murder for pleasure based on the latest science. Before I realised my null hypothesis was entirely fucked up and kept leading me astray. I can’t really empathise with people who aren’t acutely aware of the guilt and shame in carnism as it happened to me around the time I feel I can start recalling consistent memories (14ish) so it’s hard for me to understand what would be individually effective.

        The only times I’ve managed to actually change anyone’s mind in person it has been a process of relentless reminders that another way is possible which has preventing them from embracing the “normal, natural, necessary” required to justify stuff.

        Lots of activists try different things, and many studies have been done. But it appears that mind-changing happens over a long time and we’re basically highly persistent to being persuaded of anything once we form our first opinion. The best studies basically say “after such and such an intervention people rated their likelihood of going vegan higher/lower on the exit survey”. Not useless, but it’s impossible to capture what actually converts people that way.

        Personally I get the most “huh” faces when I wear my elwood’s dog meat Tshirt and cause random people to come up to me and make most of the case of veganism for me in the face of my apparent inhumanity.

        • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
          6·
          3 months ago

          Idk, figure out how to make yourself vegan and get back to me with what opened your mind?

          My reasons are dietary. I have IBS that might be crohns or worse or something else (nobody seems to reliably know) that basically makes eating right now a very annoying thing to manage. Everything I do is about being as insanely boring as possible and not upsetting my body when I am seemingly balanced.

          Mayyyyybe I could figure out balancing things while also being vegan but the barrier for me is quite high, I become completely incapacitated for days at a time when something sets me off, it’s very severe, and sometimes it just happens all by itself without a trigger. Going low fodmap is helpful. But nothing reliably has fodmap testing and fodmap info isn’t on any packaging for anything despite the prevalence of bowel problems and the well researched fact that low-fodmap diets are well known to help it.

          • NaevaTheRat [she/her]@vegantheoryclub.orgEnglish
            5·
            3 months ago

            I’m not really trying to audit you it was mostly a little joke since you seem self aware but for what it’s worth I also have IBS.

            I am sick a lot, but such is life. If I could make myself well by like harvesting a substance from the hearts of orphans I wouldn’t do that, and I basically feel the same way about killing non human people. That said a couple of things: if crohns get it figured out, early intervention is important, if IBS fodmap exclusoom is not considered a long term solution by the folks at Monash that discovered it anyway but rather a diagnostic test.

            I have slowly improved, with gradual introduction of trigger foods. Some stuff like sprouting lentils appears to help a bit. Cooking them in alkaline water (e.g. teaspoon of bicarb). Ferments help a lot! I assume the bacteria are eating the problematic sugars.

            Isolates like tvp are also great! seitan and TVP are lifesavers for me during bad flares.

            I won’t lie, it’s painful and gross and I have to wear pads 24/7 for mucus leakage at unexpected times but like if I was in the middle ages with bone cancer mine would be to suffer and die, I’m in this era with shitty food options and mine is to cramp and leak.

            Other options poop transplant trials? They show promising results, I’m keeping an eye out.

          • NaevaTheRat [she/her]@vegantheoryclub.orgEnglish
            6·
            3 months ago

            If you think you will eventually you should probably just do it, since you anticipate a future you finding it correct it seems that you anticipate finding each day you didn’t do it incorrect. So you probably owe it to yourself to conclude what you think you will anyway. It seems harder than it is, there’s lots of useful inspo over at vegantheoryclub and loads of people to answer questions you might have.

            I don’t really know what you mean re believer vs sympathiser. Like it’s not a set of strict beliefs. I assume like most people you think hurting others is bad, either you believe living beings deserve the assumption of sentience (i.e. that there is an other to hurt) unless proven otherwise or you do not. If you do not veganism would look like people avoiding skimming rocks lest they ruin the lake’s weekend, if you do then veganism is just living in accordance with the values you already hold.

              • NaevaTheRat [she/her]@vegantheoryclub.orgEnglish
                5·
                3 months ago

                Re self discipline. I have faith in you, I mean I’m a human garbage fire; I am don’t get-out-of-bed some days depressed and a polydrug user just to cope with life. I manage! It really does seem harder from the outset. Mostly because all it requires is for you to not do something, it’s not like exercise (or even brushing your teeth :P) where you have to make yourself do a thing. You can live off pressure cooked beans and rice for a long time while you figure stuff out :) and there is a veritable army of us willing to help with whatever specific issues.

                I am unsure if the belief that is ok to hurt sentient beings in certain scenarios or de-emphasis on consumption allows for veganism.

                We’re not Jains! haha I think it’s fine to hurt someone who wants to kill someone if they wont stop trying and I don’t have better options. The literal definition from the club that invented the word is:

                “Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.”

                Nothing particularly consumerist or absolute pacifist or whatever in there. I mean some of the most based vegans go around sabotaging farms and shit. The reality is most of us are always buying things so a lot of visible veganism is seen through those small acts of defiance. This is the result of circumstance though not some inherent belief that all there is to do is not buy fur coats or whatever. All sorts of vegan movements take non consumerist forms such as research and development of alternatives (some small scale, like figuring out how to garden without manure etc and teaching others is vegan praxis), producing propaganda/investigating animal ag, rescue from and sabotage of facilities that abuse non human animals, working at sanctuaries, organising politically to further animal rights and so on.

                As far as believer vs sympathizer: generally, it’s someone who won’t try to resist or even will even help in some way the changes you (and your group) are making to society because they sympathize with you and your beliefs even if they dont necessarily agree with them. It’s a a concept I think more easily applied to socialism but I think it can still apply to veganism too.

                Ah that makes sense, thanks for explaining.