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Yeah, "artificial spider silk" would be better. "Vegan" underlines that no animals are involved in its production, but it should be pretty obvious that using real spider silk for such applications would be prohibitively expensive...

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Do you think it's worth editing the title? Will I step on any metaphorical landmines because the HN community (for example) prefers immutability?

I don't think you should have. The HN guidelines say

>[...] use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.

While it being vegan is kind of beside the point, I wouldn't say that it's misleading.

This being said, the word "vegan" is not properly used here, causing confusion. "Vegan" relates to diets and food in general according to the dictionary. The author probably simply meant "plant based" and erroneously used "vegan" instead. Unless they meant it's a dish in which case... yeah, I guess.

It’s also used to talk about things like clothing made out of leather alternative.

I imagine that's also used erroneously. It may make it into the dictionary with this meaning at some point but right now people just ad-hoc borrowed the diet/food-related term "vegan" and apply it for things that use no animal products. Now imagine if someone called coal a "vegan energy source". :)

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