Adjectives imply something unusual, something different from the standard object the noun refers to. If we say "cheese" for the animal product and "vegan cheese" for the plant product, we implicitly send the message the animal product is normal and the plant product is abnormal.
Strike that. Reverse it.
Say "milk" for plant-based emulsions and "cow milk" for stolen baby cow food. SAy "burger" for veggie protein patties and "cow/pig/turkey burger" for dead rotting animal flesh.
The meat industry doesn't get to control your language.
Words are activism.
I think more communities and instances should turn them off. Don't like it, don't read it; if the post violates any rules, report it. It's that simple. If you actually feel like arguing about something, go ahead and do so, but don't just downvote and move on. It's just such a knee-jerk reaction that, as you said, does not contribute anything worthwhile to the conversation. Really riles me up.
I think it was instance-wide where lemmynsfw.com removed downvotes altogether as to encourage OC posting singles, couples, whatever, and to encourage people posting at all as a test. Then people felt like complaining, so they have been reimplemented.
Thinking back to reddit, posting something that the collective hive-mind has decided to not be appropriate for the subreddit - be it a legitimate concern or not - would just be buried in downvotes and die in "new" immediately. It discourages people from participating and getting involved with the community outside of "DAE [super popular take]?" which again does not contribute anything.
Sorry for the wall of text, but downvotes really have been annoying me ever since I started using reddit 10ish years ago. The fact that Lemmy even shows the negative scores for actual posts and not just comments is just kinda baffling.