this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023

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SLRPNK community discussion - August 2023 (slrpnk.net)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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So there are a few topics that came up lately that I think would be nice to discuss with members of this community.

Basically this is part of writing a Code of Conduct for our instance and I think we need to talk about some specific type of posts:

Doomers

Naturally the themes discussed in our communities are attracting a lot of climate doomer comments and I would say we also have a significant number of "recovering doomers" here as community members.

Earlier this week I considered closing the /c/collapse community on SRLPNK, because it is not actively moderated and attracts a lot of these types, even though ex_06 (who asked me to have their account re-activated, but not as an admin) originally intended it to be more of a psychological self-help group for people trying to get to terms with the likely loss of many things that defined their life so far.

While the typical doomer could probably need some psychological support, they are usually still in a stage of grief that makes them lash out and not engage in a constructive exchange how to make the best of the current difficult situation we sadly find ourselves in.

Mostly I have been doing temporary bans for such doomers to cool down and not spread their doom and gloom endlessly in our communities, but I think we need to come up with a common idea how to deal with this better.

Discussing civil disobedience

aka Direct Action or the other man's "Eco Terrorist" (yeah right...).

Obviously this is a topic many climate activists find themselves more and more confronted with and you might already be involved with a group engaged in such actions of civil disobedience. And lets not forget about the punk in Solarpunk either :)

However, obviously this is a public web-site and thus easily monitored by law-enforcement and other people that might be interested in reporting such discussions to the local authorities. Thus to protect this service and also our users from themselves we can't really allow planning discussions with specific targets or generally calls for action against specific persons to happen here out in the open (or in the semi-public direct messages).

Obviously, we can never condone violence against persons, but aside from that please be careful with discussing climate activism on the clear-web and rather use fully end to end encrypted means with people you can trust!

However this has obviously a large grey area and people might have stronger views on what should and should not be discussed here.

Absolute Vegans

Vegans are obviously welcome on SLRPNK and I think we can all agree that strongly reducing the consumption of animal products is a worthy goal.

However, there are some very opinionated (online) Vegans / animal rights activists that (intentionally or not) are indistinguishable from trolls and generally very toxic to deal with. Please don't feel personally attacked by this, but I think we need to come up with something regarding this in our code of conduct.

So these were the three topics I had in my mind lately, but feel free to discuss others as well.

I am looking forward to your thoughts on this!

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

So it seems you're automatically defensive about wanting to moderate vegan speech (preempting with "don't feel personally attacked) and deep down I think you know why.

I understand you're just trying to make a space where everyone feels welcome. But harrassment policy and other conduct policy should cover people getting out of bounds and requires no vegan specific clause. Making a vegan specific clause is a little hostile.

Unless you are truly aiming to ban people for having the opinion that it's not ok to not be vegan. That would be tone policey and censorious, in my opinion. If a vegan is actually harassing someone that calls for moderation, but its already a rule to refrain from harassing. If you want to make a rule on harassment and include several examples, and one of them is a vegan example, that would be fine.

It just reminds me of other contentious issues like racial justice or gender issues. Sometimes people didn't like getting called racist, but do you censor a racial minority because their message is intense and makes someone a little uncomfortable? People have the right to decline interactions that arent going well but they shouldnt expect to always be perfectly comfortable when writing in the public square.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Ok fair enough, but I think calling animal husbandry "slavery" is intentionally going for the shock value of it and just deeply offends people that otherwise strive for the same values and are usually very much aware of the of how badly animals are treated in industrial farming.

I also get your examples with racial and gender issues, and while you are right that there are some parallels, I think it is not right to attack people who very much have similar concerns about animal rights, but just came to somewhat different conclusions what to do about that.

And while I agree that it should in theory just fall under the general no-harrassement etc. rules, I am near certain that if I would actually start moderating such posts I would have to explain why anyway, so I would rather pre-empt such discussions now and not do them in the heat of the moment when someone likely feels wronged about a moderation decision.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Forbidding the comparison of animal captivity, forced reproduction and child stealing, and economic exploitation to slavery would be a clear example of indulging a censorious impulse.

I rarely use this comparison personally because it's subject to this kind of confusion (thinking comparison to human slavery is equating to human slavery). Nevertheless it's my personal opinion that when you account for the massive scale of the suffering, billions of animals yearly, a comparison of severity can still be drawn, even with any inspecies prejudices about the richness of human lives and experience potential compared to animals.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Context matters... if you say "slavery" in the context of massive industrial animal farming people are unlikely to be offended.

Using it in the context of someone having some backyard chicken or a video about a small scale sheep herder that produces wool (both actual examples from the last couple of weeks) is IMHO a different matter.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Context matters here when we're talking about what speech you're going to outlaw on this platform. You can have whatever opinion you want on whether its ok to exploit a backyard chicken but if you ban someone for this, that's quite censorious. Why don't you just say to them what you said here and let the people suss it out.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

There is nothing "censorious" about moderating trolls. Regardless of the actual matter, if someone writes comments with the explicit purpose of offending others that is trolling. If we leave people to "suss it out", there is going to be exactly one outcome: the nice people leave and only the trolls remain.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I don't think drawing parallels between small-scale farming and slavery equals trolling. It's certainly a position many non-vegans will disagree with, but that doesn't make the point automatically invalid.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I'm pretty new to this style of vegan - is the slavery analogy a genuine attempt at outreach or just fishing for a strong emotional reaction? Because so far I've only seen it when it's off topic and usually bundled with other insults.

My ancestors were never enslaved, my family doesn't bear scars from that atrocity (which happened within living memory in many places, especially when you count things like prisoner-lease) so I've had the luxury of moving on and staying on topic, and the slrpnk community has, I think, done a good job of not taking the bait in all the conversations I've seen.

But it doesn't exactly make for a welcoming place. Maybe I'm wrong, and misjudging what will offend people (I wouldn't be the first white guy to speak out of turn). But it just doesn't seem worthwhile to me - how many people repented their carnist ways VS bounced hard off vegans using this analogy or calling them murderers, pissbabies, etc?

These days I'm watching the world burn down around me and I want results, not people grandstanding about their moral purity and how hard it is to be surrounded by the rest of us. I've fallen in love with the slrpnk community because it's so action-oriented, because it's somehow both realistic and optimistic, because people here are making real steps, even small ones, to improve the world around them. It's inspired me to do more of the projects I had on the back burner, to prioritize planting and fixing and zerowaste-type reuse.

I think because this place had that effect on me, I've come to see it also as a recruiting tool - I want others to read the conversations and to reconsider consumer culture, the way our societies exploit natural resources and animals, the source of their electricity, and yes, their diet too. But I recognize that we'll be meeting people where they are and that insults make for bad recruiting.

There are many ways to help and at this point, if someone is willing to just plant some native flowers in their yard, or build a bat house, or they'll give something away instead of throwing it out, that's progress. Small steps are better than nothing, which is what we'll get if we drive people away by insulting them.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

This thread is just becoming people arguing about what type of vegan speech is effective and failing to understand the concept of the seriousness with which vegans promote and believe in animal rights. To vegans, animals are individuals and their sentience is respected and taken very seriously.

I can't speak to "off topic" or "bundled insults" but if something is "off topic" or "bundled with insults" then it can be moderated accordingly.

A lot of vegans who have had enslaved ancestors are still ok with the analogy and a lot of vegans who ancestors in the holocaust are still ok with the holocaust analogy. Since there is a wide spread of people with this very common opinion, if you censor it, you're ok censoring vegan speech which is hostile to vegans.

I've already said - people compare animal agriculture to slavery because we captivate, force impregnate, mutilate, steal their children, and economically exploit animals. We violate their rights for mere taste pleasure because today, in most parts of the world, it isn't required to do this to them.

People compare it to the holocaust because every year billions are killed, in gas chambers and in abattoirs. They're led to their deaths packed on top of each other in trucks, breaking their legs on floors of shit, dehydrated, and terrified.

When people say this, it's not TRYING to get an emotional response, this is just WHAT happens and WHAT you contribute to if you consume animal products. And some people really wish you'd stop and sometimes emotions get in the way and ok, if someone crosses a line, moderate that shit.

It looks like what's really going to happen here is that because vegans are a minority, even here, the sensibilities of people who get offended by the animal rights point of view is going to blind them to the fact that they're being incredibly censorious. Enjoy your echo chamber if you want, I guess. Disappointing.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I've only been here for a month, and I haven't posted a tremendous amount in the Slrpnk.net communities, but I've been actively reading a lot of the stuff posted here.

First, I just want to say that this community is, in my opinion, superb. I've found myself in total agreement with @[email protected]'s decisions and thought process regarding the direction this instance is going. It seems to have resulted in a vibe and an atmosphere that I find compelling, to the point that I feel this one of the nicest little corners of the internet I've seen in quite some time.

Regarding Doomers:

I think I would qualify as a 'recovering' or 'recovered' doomer, having previously been a prepper and then transitioning to a somewhat all-hope-is-lost mentality regarding the climate and the future in general. Having been in that world, I can safely say that worldview is simply harmful to the mind, and seems to entice a certain type of toxicity. In general, a lot of the people involved in those circles seem to actually wish for a collapse to occur, as it would result in an end to their current predicaments (Crippling debt, lack of meaning, an end to the rat race, etc).

While in some ways understandable, it does unfortunately result in the behavior you described. With not only a tendency toward complete apathy, but also the active discouragement of others attempting to make things better as well, resulting in a spiral of depression and angst for many.

(at least, that's what I saw of r/collapse on reddit, I haven't investigated the collapse community here).

I'm not entirely sure how that community should be handled. I can't say I'd miss them it if that community was removed, and I like the idea of replacing it with a more hopeful version, like the crumbles (as someone else mentioned) or maybe AvoidCollapse instead, which could focus more on exactly that, collapse situations and what we can do to avoid it as best we can with the means available (Though I guesss that's kinda the point of Solarpunk to begin with).

I would be more against completely removing the community if the situation really was hopeless, but after days and weeks and months of research into this area, I think practically there is much that can be done to mitigate a significant amount of the coming problems the world will face. Ultimately, I do feel that giving a space for a despairing doomerist viewpoint would, IMHO, only diminish genuinely useful efforts to make the world better.

Regarding Discussing civil disobedience:

Fully agree with your assessment here, lemmy just isn't an appropriate place for such things, and this community should not go beyond recommending safe/legal ways to resist the system. I don't think allowing more extreme sorts of discussion would really further anything useful dramatically, and would radically increase the danger of 'the system' coming down on the server, its owner, and possibly its users. It's not worth the risk!

Absolute Vegans

Again, I'm in agreement here. As someone who is trying to cut out industrial meat from my diet because of the extreme ethical violations in the meat industry, I do still believe that meat can be sourced fairly ethically on a small scale (at least for some species). My reasoning for such is based on my own unscientific opinion, but one which I'm satisfied is in the ballpark of being good enough. (I can go into detail for those interested, but for now will leave it to myself, as I don't know if it would contribute to the discussion at hand).

I'm in favor of allowing animal husbandry related posts and meat-based recipes in the food communities. Coming down on that aspect harshly I think would do more harm than good, and may turn people away from the rest of the movement.

That's just my two cents.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I'd say meat-based recipes can be found on any other mainstream instance on lemmy but Slrpnk should stand for things that help improve our environmental impact. For me it's like having tuning tips for gas guzzlers.

Nobody needs to eat meat.