I really think this is an incredibly insightful take. I can't say I hang out in many vegan specific corners of the Internet, but I know there is a very active and vocal segment of the Internet community that's anti-vegan, I've heard stories of coordinated brigading attempts against vegan communities on the Internet.

I'd imagine it would be almost impossible to run an open and welcoming community when you are getting constantly inundated with hate messages, eventually it would become incredibly difficult to discern between a user who has genuine curiosity and one who is asking bad faith questions in order to trigger some kind of debate.

At this point in time you couldn't pay me to become a mod in one of those communities, it really seems like a no win scenario.