There was a post about making cats vegan. The mod then decided that people posting information on why that is a bad idea were antivegan or something. The mod started then removing any information that pointed to cats not being able to be health while on a vegan diet. The Lemmy.world admins them stepped in stating that improperly feeding your cat constitutes animal abuse and is unethical. This made many die hard vegans very mad.
For the record, cats can not be vegan. They can survive on it but they will have shorter more painful lives and they will go blind. There bodies start breaking down without the proteins and amino acids found in meat. I understand why vegans would be unhappy with that answer but it is the way it is.
Interesting enough, that's not the case for dog. You can put a dog on a vegan diet as long as you are very careful and are constantly monitoring. It isn't for the faint of heart and can have very sad outcomes. It isn't something you can arbitrarily do.
Vegans argued that cats, which are obligate carnivores, can eat a vegan diet safely. Lemmy.world admin removed the posts for being misinformation, and the vegan community threw a fit over it.
Until I joined Lemmy I had no idea how militant vegans could be. I sorta just assumed they were a different brand of vegetarian.
I'm not opposed to their ideaology in any way, but after reading the comments on a few posts that found their way into my feed... I had to block their communities. It didn't seem likely that I'd be reading any productive discourse there.
Context: official c/vegan post, lemmy.world admin post 1 of 2
TL;DR: Debate over whether claiming that plant-based diets for carnivorous animals could be safe constitutes encouraging animal abuse + whether an admin's reaction to demote the entire mod team was justified
Veganism: Great lifestyle. Wretched, toxic community (mostly).
EDIT: I want to add I'm very much pro-vegan. They're literally right. I probably will go vegan as soon as I work out a solution to my eating disorder (ARFID). You just won't see me in any community. They just seem psychologically unhealthy.
People started arguing about whether cats can eat vegan, mods on c!vegan got involved, then an admin got involved. People's personal feelings about veganism overtook any actual discussion about when it is or isn't inappropriate for Admins/mods to step in, hence the pinned post on the front page.
I have lots of friends that are vegan/have been vegan, or are sympathetic to the cause. IRL I have had some wonderful conversations about veganism and the ethics of our diet. But on the Internet it's the vegans ironically that need to get out and touch grass. It's like there's no nuance to any conversation, like sorry I can be Peter Singer, it's actually kinda difficult to be that moral.
Some vegans decide all cats, like all other animals, should join their club, whether they want to or not. Deemed dubious practice by some but not impossible by others.
"Veganism needs to become a protected belief in every country" ... I spit my drink out laughing. What in the actual fuck?!?.
Just no. Why? Well beyond it's idiotic lunacy, I absolutely do not want any other dietary belief systems protected. Good God would that make a living legal nightmare.
I wonder if we need some kind of middle ground like Twitter where you leave the content up, with a big banner saying "this content is bullshit and here is the evidence"?
While I agree that harmful information should probably be hidden so that impressionable people don't act on it, I also don't like non-experts being the arbiters of censorship.
Absolutely, first he lumps dogs and cats together, they have extremely different dietary needs.
Second, I couldn't find anything specific to cats dietary needs being met by a vegan diet. The video's sources seem to be based on self reporting surveys. Not science.
This topic touches a very soft spot in my heart as I've had to watch a cat die from being forced on a vegan diet. I've seen the results, and it is so very sad. Keep your goddamn morals out of other's lives. Especially an animal that has no say in the matter. Fuck vegans.
By some freak statistical improbability, a significant portion of the Lemmy community revealed that they're all qualified to debate the science of the nutritional needs of animals.
Apropos of nothing - a few months ago I was looking at one of the sites that curated Fediverse block lists. (Can't remember which one.)
Now some of the blocks were quite reasonable. If a hundred site admins look at your site and go "wait a second, these guys are Nazis" and block the site, that's not so controversial, OK?
But some of the blocks were, uh, how do I put this...?
Individual drama between site admins and their cliques.
Beef.
So much beef.
So much beef that I immediately thought "gee, how can c/vegan even safely exist in Lemmy? There's so much beef everywhere."
something something vegan cat food, something something discourse about cats and food, something something head mod yeeted the entire thread and called it a day, something something lemmy.world TOS updated to reflect the decision positively.
Hence, why we're here now. I think i kinda agree with the vegans, depends on the thread itself, i wasnt there, but someone who yelled at me in dms makes me think it wasn't super spicy, and if it wasn't then who cares.
This post is honestly an excuse for anti-vegan bashing. Even if some vegan mods have bad takes for cat nutrition it shouldn't excuse the hate circle jerk on display here .
Remember to always be sceptical towards presentations that try to make you angry like this.
It would be much bigger news if vegans were killing their cats in mass in pursuit of a vegan diet. But it seems most of you are blinded by rage of otherizing people then wanting to have a discussion.
Now bring on the down votes because most of you ornery ones think just because it's sold on Amazon doesn't mean it healthy for cat or some shit idk. It looks like Benevo gets 200 orders a month those cats really sound like their starving.
Censorship of dissidence discussions due to "misinformation," "disinformation," and only allowing "science."
Our science institutions and media are just as corrupt as our politicians; that is why critical thinking should be encouraged instead of more censorship to baby the people.