How many people that say they are vegan consider figs non-vegan? Are there surveys on this? I'm going to guess most haven't thought about it (figs aren't daily in most places), don't have a strong opinion on it or don't see the harm if the insect does this process itself, yet the natural reaction of comments in newspapers is to strongly attack veganism using fringe issues like this.
Most of veganism seems pretty straightforward and rational but there's a bunch of edge cases like figs, honey, almonds and avocados people love to use a means to attack the whole concept as stupid. It would be like looking for fringe cases of things meat-eaters do (e.g. eating animals while they're still alive, eating dogs and cats) and using that to attack meat-eaters.
I'm seeing recently that newspapers love to run veganism stories where readers jump in with comments mocking imaginary vegans that hold extreme fringe views (who is actually claiming this? how many are?) to compound their existing beliefs that veganism is stupid. It's exactly the same thing as political filter bubbles where nobody is learning anything because everyone is sharing extreme and fake stories in an echo chamber.
The goal of veganism seems to be to make choices that are better for the planet and reduce animal cruelty - it turns out the choices you need to make to do that aren't always obvious (which is interesting in itself), but that shouldn't be a reason to ignore the whole concept or ridicule people who are trying to make a genuine attempt to help others.