Vegans being banned and comments being deleted from !vegan@lemmy.world for being fake vegans.
From my perspective, the comments were in no way insulting and just part of completely normal interaction. If this decision reflects the general opinion of the mod team, then from my perspective, the biggest vegan community on Lemmy wants to be an elitist cycle of hardcore vegans only, not allowing any slightly different opinion. Which would be very unfortunate.
PS: In contrast to the name of this community, I don't want to insult anyone here being a 'bastard'. I just want to post this somewhere on neutral ground. I would really appreciate an open discussion without bashing anyone.
Linking the affected users and mods: @Cypher@lemmy.world @gaael@lemmy.world @gredo@lemmy.world @iiGxC@slrpnk.net @veganpizza69@lemmy.world @veganpizza69@lemmy.vg @jerkface@lemmy.ca @TheTechnician27@lemmy.world @Sunshine@lemmy.ca @Aqua@lemmy.vg
Generally very radical vegans also have a right to their own community, however I also think there should be spaces for less radical veganism as well. It seems that currently there's none of those available, or maybe the general hostility of social media against vegans makes any of their more tolerant spaces eventually close ranks to protect their sanity. Unfortunately vegan spaces are constantly brigaded by trolls so it's understandable they have a very short fuse, and a lot of people get caught in the cross-fire.
I think the only solution here would be for a new vegan community with a focus on debate with non-vegans. However it will be tricky to find the right moderators for it who either won't be non-vegans themselves and therefore support a flood of concern-trolls and bad faith arguments, or be vegans that won't get immediately burnt out.
I think you go way to lean on the mods. I don't think its anything but power tripping for a few mods to decide who gets to be a "real vegan" and who is a "fake vegan" if they don't actually consume animal based products.
A lot of "their own community" types can keep themselves to themselves.
Dear everybody: if your posts appear to the public, the public's gonna show up and talk to you. No popular website is your unquestioned megaphone. Be prepared to argue if you target people who disagree. That is what it means, for them to disagree.
That's not how it works. Just because someone is letting you listen in doesn't mean you deserve a platform in their spaces
Spamming propaganda and erasing all criticism isn't "letting" you do anything. It's shouting in your ear and slapping you for backsass.
When the enforced opinions of a space are all that space is about... that's a circlejerk. It's nothing like a knitting community with a 'no racism' policy, despite identical mechanisms. It exists solely to push an agenda. They don't want federation. They demand a docile audience.
You have to admit it's kind of funny that Lemmy's clearest example of this is militant vegans.
Nobody is forcing you to go into the spaces where they're "spamming propaganda". Nobody forces you to subscribe to those comms and nothing is preventing your from blocking them altogether. You still don't deserve a platform in those comms.
Well I didn't invite it and yet here it is in my feed. They didn't put it there for gentle outreach. It's all posts by [thing]lover@[thing].org, in the [thing]ism@[thing].org community, to exclusively talk about [thing] by promoting exactly one opinion about [thing]. Spam spam spam spam and absolutely no eggs.
If you're going to /all, you're going to see posts in all comms. Still is not a permissions or invite to a platform in every comm without respecting their rules. You're being deliberately obtuse.
Maybe if everyone who wanders into a public-facing hot-take factory goes away scorned, that place is not compatible with being public-facing.
Surely the central point of this community is acknowledging that moderators can fuck up. Sometimes, having a very public forum in the first place is fucking up. The freedom-of-association to say 'well they're allowed to set the rules' doesn't fix how some rules will cause problems. Some rules are a misery engine. For freshly-slapped users, for burned-out moderators, or for everyone involved.
If your community federates all over the place, you're going to get users of all stripes. They didn't sneak in. You did in fact invite everyone. That's not carte blanche for all behavior - but if the behavior you exclude seems reasonable to nearly everyone else, you're gonna have a bad time. Maybe the space itself should opt out.
Maybe it shouldn't be on every individual user to identify the broken stairs.
You're seeing the rules of of necessity of running a comm on the internet and purposefully stretch what public means to argue nobody is allowed to curate their comms unless they're invisible. It's an inane take.
They can erase every last comment they get, if that's how they want to spend their time. They are free to create problems for themselves. But if they're burned-out as a result of mercilessly nitpicking even the folks who already agree with them, what on Earth could solve that, besides changing what they're doing?
If you create a list of rules that almost nobody expects or enjoys, your target audience is: almost nobody.
Niche communities can thrive in a wide-open space if they're easy to ignore. Weird fetishes, small countries, that kind of thing. The Cypriots are not "constantly brigaded." But that would change if every third post went "Cyprus is the only good country, everyone else sucks," and all disagreement was censored. However justified they feel in that message or that curation, the result is entirely predictable... and therefore, avoidable.
So, last time people were mad that vegans were mean to them this community got created:
https://lemmy.world/c/plantbased
Edit: I should finish my coffee before posting, the only post there literally points to this more active com lol: https://lemmy.world/c/plantbased@lemmy.dbzer0.com
See: https://lemmy.world/post/23634881
We all know r/vegan exists and is a cesspit of carnists, but there doesn't seem to be an actual demand for a 'plant based' space. I'm not sure why people would post about something they are kind of meh and not committed to?
If people are interested in just the food, there are communities for that:
I really don't think the rules there are onerous. Just don't talk about abusing animals and don't be a jerk to the other posters and you're good?
Hey, I didn’t make plantbased to be a less committed version to veganism. I made it because from reddit to lemmy every vegan community I’ve encountered has power tripping toxic mods and I wanted to provide an alternative space.
I’m fully committed to my veganism. But I also wanted people who aren’t to be able to discuss it without being attacked.
After I wrote this I see you’re writing from a vegan instance. I have less experience with there versus vegan communities around here.
The hardcore/toxic crowd do nothing except alienate and turn people against the cause and make people think being vegan means being surrounded by assholes.
It’s people like you that welcome everyone into the discussion that inspire more people to try it out; you’re bringing about the real change.
That’s so extremely nice of you to say :)
Lol, every vegan I know which includes a chunk of my own family went vegan because of militant vegans.
I see lots of carnists with no intention of going vegan talk about how militant vegans are bad but I have never actually met someone who is vegan and stays vegan that found wishy washy people motivating or inspiring.
You can be committed and firm on your issue without being a raging asshole about it at the same time. Most of the vegan communities I've come across don't even talk about being vegan, it's just finding more ways to shit on non vegans.
I'm not even a vegetarian but I am slowly trending y'all's direction. Finding good recipes or product recommendations is key to getting my family to come along with me.
I appreciate being, if not welcomed, at least quietly tolerated!
vegantheoryclub has both a home cooking (beware the rules re recipes), and a recipes community. There is also a discord linked with lots of pinned and extremely yummy recipes.
You are absolutely welcome to have a look, and you will not run into moderation issues unless you promote carnism. For example: wow that looks great, I'm going to have it with lamb" is as welcome as pissing in someone's face, but asking for recommendations, tips, or suggestions is completely fine.
I'll take a look, thanks.
I view that as a net positive :) trying to force people to change in one moment will never succeed.
You’re more than welcome! I view it as a space to learn and explore, not to be judged by what level vegan you are lol
The only thing I’ve moderated recently is people pushing meat in the community or being rude.
Tee hee
I should clarify: when I refer to people who aren't committed to veganism I am referring to the same people you are referring to when you say "people who aren't", i.e. the non vegans discussing veganism.
I'm apparently banned from vegan theory club. I have no idea what I could have done to them.
Lemmy world is a blocked instance on vegan theory club. @Arcanepotato@vegantheoryclub.org won't be able to see your comment.
Wow. Thats... their choice, I guess. All hail the fediverse.
They got sick of trolls invading and demanding to be debated, and lemmy.world was one of the most egregious instances. I can't blame them, vegans deserve a place to just be without every discussion turning into a debate with non-vegans.
Fair. Nobody deserves to get brigaded for living quietly and authentically.
100%
Isn't !vegan@lemmy.world less radical than !vegan@vegantheoryclub.org ?
Probably? I don't know. It started with the same mod team, didn't it?
Vegan Theory Club is more radical and different in scope. It is definitely not a place to debate veganism. I let them come to my instance after some nonsense about lemmy.world and we're not federated with lemmy.world. Vegan Theory Club is social media for vegans specifically.
What we see in this post seems to be a debate among vegans about what kinds of places are best to support. Surely that should be welcome in a place called "vegan theory"? It's a form of "debating veganism", just not one between vegans and omnivores.
If I understand my history correctly, Vegan Theory Club is a theory club for vegans, not a club for vegan theory specifically.
There is a discord server of the same name which is way more active for the discussion of leftist theory. Members of the instance can make communities - it's just no one has created one specifically to talk about vegan theory.
Hamid was respond to a suggestion for communities for vegans to debate carnists which db0 correctly identified as draining.
I'm not sure what debate between vegans would be. Debating our interpretation of texts? There is a book club community that's perfect for that.
Literally what I just said. "Is it better for one restaurant to succeed with 100% vegan food while most other restaurants entirely lack vegan options, or for every restaurant to have a couple of good vegan options?"
Your instance admin seems to have established (in the comments of this thread) a pretty clear strong opinion on that topic, but a less obnoxious community could have debates like that among themselves and create fruitful results. Which is what it seems was happening in the thread this post is about, until the mods of the LW vegan community put a stop to it.
I really don't know why carnists have such strong opinions on vegan spaces.
For the most part, I don't care. But I do care about abuses of power, whenever I see them. And that's what is clearly going on at the LW community, and disappointingly seems to be the case also at VTC.
There is no debating on the side of allowing a restaurant to serve meat on a vegan messaging board. Debating this is missing the point of veganism entirely and my user community understands this and is why they created an account on a small instance like Vegan Theory Club. We are of a similar mind and the club is for people to find people on the same page as them. It works, we have off lemmy resources and an active discord. Veganism isn't a diet, it is a social justice movement to end the human exploitation of Animals, debating that serving meat is ok would get you banned on my instance as well. Personally I would have shut down a vegan restaurant before introducing meat and reopened as something else.
I don't personally eat at non vegan restaurants ever. I almost never go to restaurants at all frankly and prefer potlucks and cooking at our homes when I hang out with my friends. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-prole-info-abolish-restaurants
In an ideal world I'd love to have only vegan restaurants and everyone being vegan globally. As this is not within my power, I am looking for a way that benefits veganism the most.
I think the easier it gets to be vegan, the more people will get on board. If you get vegan options only in specialized places in big cities, that will make it hard for anyone not living close to that or being part of social cycles not 100% vegan.
If a purely vegan restaurant survives economically, I am more than happy. But if they don't, I definitely prefer them to add a few omnivore dishes rather than closing completely and getting replaced by another steakhouse.
I don't think having this opinion makes me any kind of bad vegan or fake vegan but I'm happy to hear your points if you think otherwise.
I think the piece of information that is being missed is that VTC is inherently anti capitalist and therefore the concept of "supporting businesses" so that they can survive doesn't really make sense in that context. (See link Hamid posted)
Just in the context of trying to get a work group to go to lunch, finding a place that fits everyone's diets is tough, so if a place exists that is one, and only one, diet type then big groups wont be able to go there for business events or catering. Depending on the location, that could be a huge revenue source missed.
Is there anyone who would genuinely be unable to find something they can eat at a vegan restaurant?