Exposing the Machine: Coding, Compassion, and My Spotlight on AreYouVegan

I recently had the absolute privilege of connecting with Marko from AreYouVegan.com. He is building an incredible platform connecting plant-based freelancers and brands, and he’s launching a new “v-zine” section to highlight activists and projects making a difference.

He asked to feature Until Every Cage Is Empty in a spotlight interview.

While the technical challenges of mapping thousands of animal exploitation facilities are massive, the emotional and philosophical drivers are what keep the server running. Marko asked me some incredibly thoughtful questions that forced me to reflect on my childhood, the “happy farm” myth, and the surprising way the public reacts to this data.

You can read the official feature on his site here:
Spotlight: Until Every Cage Is Empty

The Interview

1) What was the moment — or series of moments — that made you decide you needed to start Until Every Cage Is Empty?

It wasn’t one single flash of inspiration, but rather a slow burn that started when I was very young—elementary school or perhaps even younger.

Because of my family situation and a naturally shy personality, I didn’t have many friends growing up. I spent most of my early childhood at my babysitter’s house. There was a dog there who ended up being my absolute best friend. We grew up together, side by side.

But my little mind couldn’t comprehend why everyone treated him so terribly. He wasn’t allowed inside the house; we were encouraged to hit him or shoo him off. I watched my best friend be neglected and abused constantly. It deeply upset me then, and to this day, it is a major driver for why I advocate for animals. I saw then—and I still see today—a person behind those eyes. That recognition is what ignites the fire in me every day to do something about it.

Fast forward to adulthood: I only went vegan a little over a year ago after watching Gary Yourofsky’s famous speech. I decided to look up the locations of these terrible places he spoke about. I came to find out that no one had actually compiled a comprehensive map of them. If they did, the projects were disorganized or had very little data.

So, I decided to put my programming skills to use. And boom—the project was born.

Here is a glimpse of me and my childhood best friend, the spark that started it all: Watch on YouTube

2) How many people are involved in the project? How did it all start? How do you compile the information, locations, data etc?

It started with just me in my room. I was coding and compiling data after work, sometimes 8 hours a day, while on summer break from college. It was a grind. It took about 3 or 4 weeks of this isolation before I started telling people about it.

A few weeks after that, I open-sourced the code and started a social media campaign. From there, it snowballed. I received hundreds of messages from different activists and developers.

Today, our development community on Discord has around 50 members. I’ve received contributions on GitHub from about 5 other software developers, some of whom have added entire countries to the database. It’s amazing to see the engineering community rally around a cause like this.

3) What does “Until Every Cage Is Empty” mean to you — beyond the name?

It’s a mission statement.

It is about the principle that you cannot fight an enemy you cannot see. The machine of animal agriculture is incredibly powerful and incomprehensibly evil, but it is not hidden. It is physical. It takes up space. It uses resources. By mapping it, we take away its ability to hide in the abstract.

4) What are some early challenges you encountered when building this project (resources, awareness, opposition, logistics)?

Technically, the challenge was (and is) incorporating thousands of different, messy, disparate sources into a single, clean database. Government data is rarely formatted for easy consumption.

Emotionally, there was the toll of being confronted with the brutal reality of the data every single day. We are talking about billions of animals suffering. I felt immense pressure to devote as much time and energy to getting this out as possible because the scale of the emergency is so vast.

However, despite the logistical headaches, it seems like there was a massive need for a tool like this in the activist community. Because of that demand, the project became pretty well known in a very short amount of time.

5) What’s been the most powerful story—of an animal, of a person, or a campaign—that affirmed to you that you’d made the right decision to start this work?

I wouldn’t say there was a single most powerful individual story. Rather, it was the collective response.

Seeing so many people instantly rally around this project, send hundreds of supportive messages, share the map, and take time out of their busy lives to donate to or work on a project I started in my bedroom… that gave me the most amount of validation I could have possibly received. It proved that this tool is necessary.

6) What is one myth or misconception about animal suffering / veganism that you wish people would stop believing — and what would you replace it with?

Oh man, it’s hard to narrow it down to just one.

But I think the most damaging myth is the idea that non-human animals somehow experience pain and the world fundamentally differently than humans and their pets. This disconnect allows so many people to dismiss or mock the suffering of billions of sentient, innocent animals.

If people realized that a pig fights for its life with the same fear as a dog, or that a cow mourns her calf with the same grief as a human mother, the industry would collapse overnight.

7) What do you hope people walking away from interacting with Until Every Cage Is Empty feel, believe, or do differently?

I want them to be in shock at just how close these places are.

I want them to fundamentally approach the topic of animal agriculture differently. Many people are so far removed from reality that they genuinely believe in the “happy farm” story. They believe that animal deaths for their food are a distant, small, forgivable price to pay.

Showing someone that their local community college kills dogs in laboratory experiments, or that the slaughterhouse 3 miles down the road kills over 10 million animals a year, really helps put the reality of the situation into context. It brings the horror home.

Here is a look at an early version of the map visualizing that data: Watch Early Dev Video

8) What has surprised you most since starting this project — an unexpected ally, a turn in public conversation, or something you didn’t anticipate about activism or change?

The perception among non-vegans has genuinely surprised me.

I used to make activist videos where I would talk about the horrible meat, dairy, and egg industries. About 95% of all the comments, across all platforms, were negative. People mocked the animals. People hate being shown that what they are doing is wrong, so they respond with defensiveness.

However, since changing the narrative to “I’m exposing a trillion-dollar industry founded in violence against innocent beings,” the perception among non-vegans completely flipped. It is now viewed with 95% positivity.

People who actively pay for and support exactly what I am fighting view what I am doing as noble and brave. It’s a fascinating psychological turn—when you frame it as exposing a corrupt industry, people are on your side, even if they participate in that industry.

9) What do you think keeps people stuck from acting on compassion—fear, laziness, habit, social pressure—and what’s your strategy (or advice) for helping people move from caring to doing?

Ignorance.

All of my life, until a year ago, I was also a meat eater. I knew vaguely that animals died in the process, but I never truly considered it. Ideas of happy farms, animal products being necessary for health, the Cartesian view of animals as unfeeling machines, and immense cultural and social ties all stopped me from considering the consequences of my actions.

There’s no one most effective strategy from what I can tell; different people are convinced by different methods.

However, personally, documentaries like Dominion, and particularly Gary Yourofsky’s “Most Important Speech Ever,” have the highest turnover rate I’ve seen. If the viewer goes in with an open mind, it guarantees that their entire worldview regarding animals is shattered. Once that happens, they are much more receptive to the vegan message.

Final Thoughts

I want to thank Marko again for the opportunity to feature the project on AreYouVegan.com.

If you are a developer looking to contribute, check out our repo. If you are an activist, use the map. And if you are neither, just take a look at the data. See what is happening in your own backyard.

- Eli