YouTube/ThatVeganTeacher
- That Vegan Teacher has been banned on TikTok for community guideline violations.
- The animal rights activist had 1.7 million followers on the app.
- In a video posted to YouTube, she said that she “isn’t going to stop.”
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Kadie Karen Diekmeyer, known online as That Vegan Teacher, has been banned on TikTok. Her account page, which had 1.7 million followers before it was taken down, now only shows a “couldn’t find this account” message that says she was banned for “multiple community guideline violations.”
Why was That Vegan Teacher banned on TikTok?
The exact reason for the ban is still unknown, but Diekmeyer has been a controversial presence on the viral video app. Diekmeyer has known for consistently trying to convince others, like celebrity chefs Gordon Ramsey and Jamie Oliver, to go vegan. Most recently, she focused on YouTuber TommyInIt, one of the fastest-growing Minecraft content creators who recently hit four million followers on TikTok.
On Thursday, Diekmeyer posted a TikTok duetting Tommy showing off his two golden YouTube play button awards, where she pulled out a cucumber and said “nice vegan girls don’t want to play with your buttons, but if you want them to play with your buttons, you’ll have to show them your fruits and your vegetables.” Tommy is only 16-years-old and some online, including his fans, found that comment distasteful.
—Jadyn (@JadynIsBanned) February 23, 2021
Hours after the ban on Tuesday morning, Diekmeyer posted a 23-minute monetized video with the comments turned off on her channel about the ban. In it, she talked about how she’s glad that she is no longer a teacher, claiming that a “group of teenage boys” were what led to her account getting banned and that she was “removed” because she made “them feel that guilt” about eating meat.
"They cut the head off the most prominent animal rights activist on the app, the most well-known. The most hated, but the most well-known," she said. "But I'm still here and I'm not going to stop. "
She also doubled down on her statements from a previous TikTok comparing killing animals to the death of Jews in the Holocaust. "Animals are crammed into places that are as horrible as the Nazi death camps and are in fact worse," she said in the video.
Who is That Vegan Teacher?
The 56-year-old Canadian joined the app in 2019 but rose to prominence in July 2020 after her "Eating Animals is Wrong, McDonalds" song went viral. Asking a corporate fast-food chain to change their entire menu was seen as noble by some and ridiculous to others, creating a hunger for more of her songs or content. Over the next few months, she gained hundreds of thousands of followers.
As her profile became larger, so did the scrutiny around her content. She's posted a song telling followers to change their religion, had her dog go on a vegan diet, and argued that is it's less "selfish" and "more special" to come out as an animal rights activist rather than LGBTQ.
"Coming Out as an animal rights activist is one of the most courageous, unselfish things you will ever do because it is NOT about you, it's about OTHERS," she wrote on that TikTok.
Multiple petitions have been created to get her deplatformed, with one asking for her removal pulling in over 20,000 signatures since it was uploaded in mid-2020.
Diekmeyer did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.