r/vegan: rules, karma requirements and posting culture

Who posts here

People who want to go vegan and do not know where to start are welcomed and pointed to the FAQ. Long-time vegans talk about activism, relationships and burnout in terms that assume you already share the ethics. A sincere beginner question does fine. A question that treats veganism as a diet trend, or one from the over-asked list, gets short answers or is removed.

• Committed ethical vegans, many of them years in, who set the tone.
• New and returning vegans asking for practical help with food, family and money.
• Curious non-vegans asking questions, tolerated when they are sincere.
• Activists sharing campaigns, news and footage.
• People venting about living among non-vegans: dating, family meals, work.

Karma and account requirements

What it takes to get a post through in r/vegan.

What you can post

What happens to a new post

Where the most recent posts ended up. Sample size: 400.

• Stayed up53%
• Removed by Reddit's filters6%
• Held by AutoModerator40%
• Removed by moderators<1%
• Deleted by the author2%

Reddit counts a removal by the subreddit's own AutoModerator rules as a moderator removal, so that share is not all human. Held by AutoModerator means the post is waiting in the mod queue.

What happened when we posted here

We have posted here ourselves. This is how our own posts and comments fared.

Stayed up

100%

Removed by Reddit's filters

0%

Removed by moderators

0%

Period

September 2025 to July 2026

The rules, in the mods' words

1. 1

   Civility rules

   Civil discussion is welcome, trolls and personal abuses are not. AKA, "Remember the Human", or "Don't be a jerk." This implies several points described extensively in our wiki.

2. 2

   No extensive debate

   Questions, discussions & debate from curious non-vegans is welcome and encouraged, but extensive or tedious debate is not. We are not a debate sub, check out /r/DebateAVegan. Our FAQ may address your concerns as well. Check out our wiki for more details!

3. 3

   No brigading

   Absolutely no brigading is allowed either from or to this sub - all such posts or comments will be removed. This rule applies when a call to action exists, even when that call is only implied, accompanied by links to other subs and/or easily followed screenshots of conversations. Check out our wiki for more details!

4. 4

   No spam

   We encourage active community members to share their content with /r/vegan. However, if it appears that your participation in the community consists solely of promoting blogs/vlogs/websites/instagrams/etc., whether they be your own or someone else's, or the community reports your submissions as spam, your threads may be removed. This inevitably applies to submissions from brand-new users.

5. 5

   No non-vegan posts

   All posts must have something to do with the topic of veganism; if an implicit connection to veganism is vague, then the title or text of the post should explicitly make the relationship clear. This applies only to newly submitted posts, and not comments on posts. Check out our wiki for more details!

6. 6

   No over-asked questions

   There are several questions that we get asked over and over on this sub, and particularly non-vegans coming here to ask questions, should use the search function and/or check our FAQ *first*, and *then* ask their question only if it isn't thoroughly answered already. Check out our wiki for a list of examples & more details!

These are the rules as archived in January 2025. Rules change. Check the sidebar before you post.

The culture

r/vegan defines veganism as a philosophy about animal exploitation, and the submit page says in so many words that it is not a diet. That shapes everything. Food posts exist, but the centre of the subreddit is ethics: what counts as vegan, how to live with people who are not, how to cope with what you know about farming.

About 79% of posts are text and they run long, around 125 words. A third of titles are questions. Common threads are a relationship strained by one partner eating meat, a parent who will not pay for vegan food, a product that disappeared from the shelves, a moral edge case like insects or secondhand leather. Replies are plentiful, 25 on a typical post, and run about 27 words. Almost none contain links. AutoModerator comments on every post with a documentary and resources for newcomers.

The fault line is tone toward non-vegans. Some regulars argue for patience and say pushing people backfires. Others are done being gentle and say so. Both are visible in the same thread. The rules allow curiosity and shut down sustained debate, and the civility rule covers everyone, including people the regulars consider trolls.

What lands

• A personal situation with a real dilemma, such as dating someone who is not vegan or being asked to do something at work that conflicts with your ethics.
• A sincere question to the community that vegans can answer from experience, like whether they kill insects.
• News of a campaign or a win for animals, shared as a link with a clear headline.
• Rants about social friction. They are a recognised genre with their own flair.
• Practical requests with constraints spelled out: protein targets, time, budget.

What gets removed or ignored

• Posts held by AutoModerator, about 40% of our sample. The criteria are not published. New and low karma accounts are the likely target.
• Debate bait and bad faith questions, which the rules send to r/DebateAVegan.
• Over-asked questions that the FAQ already answers.
• Posts with no clear link to veganism, and graphic posts not marked NSFW.
• Accounts that only post their own blog, video channel or social pages. Moderators removed very few posts by hand in our sample, under 1%, and the two we saw were image posts with no reason shown.

The unwritten rules

• Do not call it a diet. Plant-based and vegan mean different things here, and mixing them up marks you as an outsider.
• If you are not vegan, say so up front and ask plainly. Sincere questions get straight answers. Leading ones get told to go to the debate subreddit.
• Expect moral bluntness. Being told to just do it already is normal, and not considered rude.
• Do not link or screenshot other subreddits to complain about them. The brigading rule covers implied calls to action.
• Products get discussed by name all the time, by customers. A brand talking about itself reads very differently.

Self-promotion

The spam rule is friendlier than most. It encourages active community members to share their content, and says threads may be removed when someone's participation consists solely of promoting blogs, vlogs, websites or social accounts, or when the community reports them as spam. It adds that this inevitably applies to brand-new users. In practice a few small self-interested posts sit in the feed, such as an invitation to a new activism chat server, and they draw little attention. What the room rewards is ethics and lived experience. A vegan business owner who takes part as a vegan first will be fine. An account that arrives to post its product will be filtered before anyone sees it.

How people write here

Typical post length

127 words

Typical title length

7 words

Titles phrased as a question

32%

Typical comment length

27 words

Comments that include a link

1%

Posts that carry a flair

57%

The regulars

The accounts that showed up most in our sample. Worth reading before you post: they set the tone, and they are usually the first to reply.

Top keywords

The words and phrases that show up far more often here than in other communities, from recent posts in r/vegan.

• vegan 146 posts
• animals 63 posts
• veganism 37 posts
• animal 56 posts
• meat 51 posts
• vegans 27 posts
• vegetarian 33 posts
• eat 44 posts
• food 40 posts
• eating 35 posts
• dominion 11 posts
• dairy 18 posts
• diet 24 posts
• slaughterhouse 8 posts
• vegan food 9 posts
• tofu 17 posts
• cheese 16 posts
• cows 7 posts
• animal products 10 posts
• eating meat 9 posts
• non vegan 7 posts
• farming 9 posts
• slaughtered 6 posts
• factory farming 6 posts
• animal rights 6 posts
• eggs 13 posts
• moral 11 posts
• ethical 10 posts
• eat meat 8 posts
• life 31 posts
• foods 15 posts
• environmental 10 posts
• non-vegan 7 posts
• cow 8 posts
• plant 14 posts
• dairy industry 6 posts
• bred 6 posts
• milk 13 posts
• products 24 posts
• thought 28 posts

Recurring topics: vegan, food, meat, help, health, veganism.

Growth

1. 201218k
2. 201330k
3. 201443k
4. 201561k
5. 201694k
6. 2017161k
7. 2018283k
8. 2019408k
9. 2020543k
10. 20231.4M
11. 20241.8M
12. 20251.9M
13. 20262M

Related subreddits

• r/AskCulinary
• r/cookingforbeginners
• r/wfpb
• r/budgetfood
• r/culinary
• r/Cooking
• r/ClimateShitposting
• r/exvegans
• r/AskVegans
• r/RawVegan

Common questions