this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2026
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I'm on .ml and just don't see this. I moved here from .world after the cat food ban. The stupidity burned too much for me to stay there. I'm unsubscribed to most of the lemmy communities where the political crap is, so maybe that helps.
Should i ask what the "cat food ban" was?
It's a long story but basically after some stupid drama, lemmy.world banned discussion of cat food unless there was scientific evidence presented that the cat food was healthy for the cat. The drama had been about vegan cat food discussions in the vegan discussion group. Vegan cat food turns out to be a thing and appears to have enough approvals to be sold in pet stores, but people on .world wanting to talk about it should come over here to .ml. No I wasn't a participant in the vegan group discussion itself. I made some posts in the surrounding drama thread that you can probably find in my .world profile from shortly after I joined.
oh man, I forgot about that shit. I'm pretty sure I got banned from some communities for that.
🤷 I just blocked them back and moved on.
????? I'm still confused.
Lemmy.world's admin (not community mods but the actual instance admin) decreed that lemmy.world was going to be like Wikipedia, where anything controversial that you posted had to be accompanied by a research citation, more or less. The specific statement under dispute was that brand XYZ vegan cat food was ok to feed to your cat. A bunch of idiots howled "cats are obligate carnivores, hur hur! They can't survive on a vegan diet! Mods, delete that comment!!!!" and the site admin sided with the idiots. So I had to escape from the stupidity. Are you still confused? Btw the vegan cat food is perfectly fine for cats as far as I can tell. No I'm not about to go look for ~~diffs~~ links so some of those details may be garbled by now.
I don't think the citation policy was ever enforced on anything else, but anything that crazy is hard to forget.
.world also defederated hexbear because it didn't like hexbear's politics, but I'm a regular on hexbear's covid community (which is pretty good and not that political) so I had to go elsewhere for it. I can still reach it from .ml but this convinced me that the federation model is a failure. There's no giant Spez overlord who can censor you, but there are 100 petty instance admins who can censor you instead. I'm still on Lemmy to stay away from Spez though.
WHAT that is BONKERS
Well you can find the actual wording, but I think it didn't have much effect except that one discussion. The edict was issued and otherwise forgotten about.
Still crazy it was even a thing lol. What a concept. And then to weaponize it. Against vegans. All of it is increasingly absurd and ridiculous. Thank you for sharing it with me.
Ok, found a comment that I posted in that thread: https://lemmy.world/post/19136453/12040944
You can see the initial post too, about the rule change.
Oh my God and they so clearly reverse engineered that entire rule specifically so they could disagree with vegan cat food.
I just re-read some of that thread and omg, the the stupidity level was overpowering. There were some earlier incidents but that one clinched it for me.
I mean just to be clear veterinarians and animal welfare groups disagree with you and to be honest it is wrong to force an animal to follow your belief system when it isn't a natural system for them.
They still shouldn't have banned people talking about it though. Part of what makes group discussions so good is that you can call shit out and point out stupidity. And the ones with citations win and the ones with feelings well, get laughed at I guess. But to require it is probably not the right move.
Well, raising livestock for meat to feed to your cat doesn't sound so natural for the meat animal either ;). But, I was less bothered by the vegan-ethics stuff in that thread than the just plain stupidity. And no it's generally not worthwhile calling out stupidity in that type of thread, when the stupidity is coming from a hive mind. All you can do to keep your sanity is nope out.
Humans have raised livestock for around 11000 years and most estimates place cat domestication at around 2000 with even the oldest most generous estimates placing it at 9500 so yes it is a natural part of humanity and domestication.
Animals eat other animals. Has been that way since the beginning of life.
Feeding your carnivorous animal tofu and vegetable blends with no meat ever even when medical animal doctors tell you that's stupid and killing the animal isnt natural at all. And that's probably only existed for about as long as the disease of social media has.
You should never force an animal to eat a diet its evolution has ruled out. The people that do this think they know best and none of them are veterinarians they are just crazy people who want to force their beliefs on all living things whether it kills them or not. Because killing the animals is super bad unless its by starvation of the nutrients their body needs and then its ok, I guess?
Also you said "and the admins sided with the idiots" when bringing this up implying that people who think cats should eat what they have always eaten are idiots and not the ones who will force their diet on any living thing, killing them be damned! Those people that would force their beliefs on living things even when it kills them are abusive idiots in my opinion and I hope their cats run away from them and go eat birds and shit to get their strength back.
There's hiveminds and then there's "hey evolution and modern science combined both can tell you this is a bad idea and going to kill this animal". Pointing that out doesn't make them a hivemind.
It's hard to tell a cat what to eat or what not to eat. I posted about that in the thread. We had cats at home when I was a kid, we fed them regular (non vegan) cat food, but they also constantly killed mice and bugs and stuff like that. Apparently domestic cats decimate bird populations, and they kill way more than they actually eat.
All of that is irrelevant though. That thread is full of people who saw the words "obligate carnivore" and immediately inferred that a cat that doesn't eat meat will die. That's logically and scientifically ridiculous and ignores the actual definition of an obligate carnivore. So the stupidity was unbearable. It's fine to get into a careful dicussion about cat nutrition involving veterinarian advice and scientific studies and reach a pro or anti vegan conclusion. But saying "obligate carnivore" as a thought-stopper and having it work on the site admin just showed that the site was too messed up to engage with. Simliar debates happen on Wikipedia all the time but each side brings miles of citations to the table. I.e., they would have at least weighed actual facts instead of stopping after a slogan decided everything.
Fwiw someone in the thread said that cats require taurine (an amino acid) in their diets and that taurine isn't found in plant sources, but that it can be synthesized. Does a plant diet with synthetic taurine supplements give a healthy cat all by itself? IDK, but it means that the topic is more complicated than "obligate carnivore, hur hur!!".
If its hard to tell a cat what to eat then put a bowl of some regular cat food out and put a bowl of the vegetarian stuff and see which one they pick. One or two days maybe they will take the vegan stuff but after that its not going to happen because their natural instincts and anatomy will prevail.
An obligate carnivore is an animal that cannot get all the nutrients it needs from plant matter and bacteria, so it requires nutrients found only in animal flesh. And veterinarians classify cats as obligate carnivores so I'm not sure why you think people are idiots for pointing that out.
I noticed you said the cat would go eat mice and bugs pretty much further reinforcing that they are carnivores and not vegan. I really hope you don't have a cat
No that's wrong, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivore#Obligate_carnivores , "Obligate or "true" carnivores are those whose diet in the wild requires nutrients found only in animal flesh." The key words are "in the wild". As I mentioned in my post that I linked, it's quite difficult (though possible) for humans to live purely on wild plants. Vegan humans usually consume a lot of beans and grains that have to be cooked before eating, i.e. transformed to a state not found in the wild. But then they do fine. Is the same possible with cats, particularly if can you add synthetic amino acids? Maybe yes, maybe no, but it's a biology question that isn't disposed of by the words "obligate carnivore".
Preferences aren't that relevant. Humans by nature usually prefer beer and doughnuts over anything healthy. They have to consciously override that impulse or end up like Homer Simpson.
Also regarding evolution, cats aren't just carnivores, they're predators. Their natural diet is meat that was killed just moments ago. If feed them instead on canned meat that was killed months ago, you're turning them into scavengers, not so natural. Cows and chickens, of course, didn't evolve to live in factory farms either.
Again though whether vegan diets are good or bad for cats is completely irrelevant to the stupidity of that thread. Even if you think it came to the right answer about cat diets, a stopped clock is right twice a day. The issue is rejecting any type of careful thought or research in reaching the conclusion, not the conclusion itself.
No I don't have a cat. We had cats when I was a kid and we fed them cat food with meat in it (the concept of vegan cat food would have been totally alien to us at that time). We didn't underfeed them. The cats killed mice and bugs anyway. They do that, it's called "overkill", a biology term that describes a predator animal killing more prey than it needs to eat. As I mentioned too, the cats even tried to feed US sometimes. They occasionally brought home dead mice or birds that they dropped in front of us. I don't think we ever ate any though.
I already kind of assumed cat kibble was made with plants or something lol. Meat is expensive.
As long as they're healthy and nutrition is met, who cares? I'm sure that they actually tested this food before putting it on the market. Feels like most of the "discussion" was just people raging against veganism and vegetarianism again.
!Memes@lemmy.ml is mostly Russia/China propaganda.
Yeah because Lemmy is so important that Russia and China need to astroturf it, lol. Maybe people have different views and understanding of the world than yours? Not everything is fucking propaganda.
I don’t think Russia and China target Lemmy. I think a lot of people on Lemmy have been kicked off other platforms for blindly buying into foreign propaganda just because they hate the US.
It’s propaganda when you post memes about how the Tiananmen Square massacre didn’t happen.
No one should be believing 100% of anything that any government says. Not the US. Not China. Not Russia. Not South Korea or North Korea.
A sane take? In this thread?
Go back to reddit
Go back to lemmy.ml
Also, which part isn't sane?
You're saying their are governments you should trust 100% about everything?
Or that you disagree with him when he says he doesn't think the countries China and Russia are targeting Lemmy?
Because if you believe either that's actually insane.
More likely you got butthurt because he said all you crazy fucks got banned from other public spaces so naturally congregated to one that only bans people that disagree with you.
I'm on .ml, learn how federation works
I know how it works because here (on this instance) you can't just ban folks for "imperialism" when they prove you wrong you have to be forced to actually deal with it and cry.
That's why I suggested to go back to your comfortable echo chamber where you might have an easier time not having to see different opinions. This must be a horrible experience for you out here.
I noticed in that other thread when I proved your ass wrong about the bullshit your instance spreads you didn't have anything to say huh? I'm shocked I tell you. Shocked.
Again, learn how federation works. And I'm not the one freaking out and blocking people about different opinions
Your entire instance is. Also you seem to think I'm the OP of this post? I haven't blocked anyone except for one user and it was because of cartoon CP they posted in the self hosted community.
I think its fun watching idiots try to make sense about the world its like going to the zoo or something. Gives the federation experience some flair.
Again, go back to reddit you insufferable dork
Don't worry baby, I'm not going anywhere. I'm always gonna be here for you.
Cringe
Kisses.
Propaganda is the deliberate spreading of biased or misleading information, ideas, or rumors to influence public opinion and shape how people think and act. Instead of presenting all sides of an issue, it uses emotional appeal and selective facts to promote a specific cause, group, or leader. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
don't need to be an astroturfer to do this. lots of people who genuinely push their beliefs use propaganda to push it.
Good thing you're immune, though.
Ok I just looked there and got some chuckles. I wouldn't lose sleep over it. Anyway like they say on AO3: don't like, don't read.
I’m blocked for making a comment on a post.