It's just one step closer towards degenerating into every other social media platform.

Purported misinformation should be met with community criticism, belittling, and self-policing. Not some impotent blanket ban.

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.

I saw the original post, and I was a bit skeptical myself. But I believe they might have actually cracked the formula/recipe for truly vegan and nutrition complete cat food.

I don't blame the user for posting that at all. If it actually checks out, that's a good thing in my book.

But if it doesn't check out as nutritionally complete, then the company making the food should be called out, not the user that posted the article.

I want all the kitties, puppies and other critters to be as healthy as possible, just like any other caring person.

We have already seen a few smaller instances move away from lemmy.world and that is good for diversity in the Fediverse.

As for the action of the particular admin, I do think the action of demodding the user was the wrong step. As the admin post said, the topic is controversial so I am not going to touch it.

Ideally, an instance admin shouldn't be commenting with an admin account. A seperation of admin and daily user account should exist but I realise that it may be cumbersome.

admin removed as mod by mods
admin re-adds self as mod
admin removes other mods

Reddit behavior

What do you the new section about misinformatiom? Do you think reddthat needs one?

When considering misinformation clauses I like the Wikipedia example. Intentionally or not, a core strategy wikipedia followed from early on is "don't give a platform to the trolls". Some believe that constructive critism is not effective against an attention seeking troll, it's much more efficient for everyone to ban them early.

That said, freedom of speech is equally important and it's important to differentiate between hard to discuss topics and misinformation. Hard to discuss topics are important because they help us explore new ideas, and grow as people and society.

All in all, I don't like LW's misinformation section, but I do think one is necessary. While, I cannot make a complete suggestion, I would definitely consider updating the clauses about peer reviewed research. Publications can be a reliable source of information, but gatekeeping knowledge into academic institutions is an issue IMO (especially if you consider that being a researcher is an socioeconomic privilege).

What do you think about how the situation was handled by the LW admin team?

It was a roller coaster to watch the controversy unveil, but I think the situation was handled well by the LW team. An admin made a few mistakes, which is understandable, the mistakes were acknowledged and fixed.

Given that LW is the biggest lemmy instance, how do you think these changes will influence smaller instances like reddthat?

While, I am sure of the influence LW holds over other lemmy instances, I try to remember that in the scope of the fediverse LW is relatively small.