Recent events over at lemmy.world have got me thinking, and I wanted to see what the community here are reddthat.com thinks.
Most details are available at the lw admin team’s latest post. TLDR A discussion about whether a vegan cat diet was viable started at c/vegan. An admin banned some comments and removed a moderator of the community. LW updated their TOS with a section about misinformation. The admin actions were reversed.
(Probably, I am misrepresenting the situation, read the link before taking up arms)
While, I prefer to enter my own opinions in a comment, I would like to add some questions to frame the discussion:
- What do you the new section about misinformatiom? Do you think reddthat needs one?
- What do you think about how the situation was handled by the LW admin team?
- Given that LW is the biggest lemmy instance, how do you think these changes will influence smaller instances like reddthat?
- Do you have any other take aways from this? Or any other questions?
- (bonus) Isn’t it hilarious that lemmy has its own tea (=gen z for drama)?
My main issue would be that that’s the kind of thing that can be taken as advice that lands you in legal hot water. Classifying it as misinformation is maybe a step in the wrong direction, but I think the spirit behind it is to prevent people from glomming onto untested and anecdotal “evidence.”
There’s no veterinary medical professional that would currently recommend such a thing, and allowing that kind of “advice” to proliferate, however well-intentioned, could potentially land the instance operators in court (“Your Honor, I was just following the advice I saw on Lemmy. I wasn’t trying to hurt my cat.”).
I wouldn’t mind if Reddthat had a policy against offering medical advice, including untested veterinary advice.