I just don't trust these kind of widely shared blocklists with zero control, doesn't seem like a great feature for a site to have tbh.

Who controls the list? Who makes sure they don't abuse the power to get people blocked by many for no good reason?

Feeding animals plants so you can kill and eat them when they grow big is so much less efficient than just eating plants directly.
So even if plants are sentient then being vegan is still the best way to do the least amount of harm.

"which makes them part of the core gameplay, and that makes collecting less fun"

Not sure I follow, why does linking them to gameplay make them less fun to collect?

Huh that is strange!

I imagine they know people would never actually update if it wasn't forced and that would cause a lot of security issues.

It is real annoying tho.