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It sounds like you already know: that's simply how echo chambers work. Ultimately the admin (team) does have the literal power and authority to decide what goes into their machine, obviously, and then to a lesser degree the moderators, but beyond that, at the conceptual level those in charge can either serve at the will of the people or become enforcers. Those who choose to comply underneath such a system are allowed to remain, whereas those who prefer to think for themselves leave. It is thus an evolutionary filtration/selection system, ensuring that the system itself will continue forwards along those lines, likely indefinitely.
They have drunk the kool-aide on the whole Might Makes Right ideology. Except only choosing to use that whenever it suits them (e.g. they kick out those who they do not like), yet cry unfair when they believe that same exact mode of thinking is leveraged against them. All the while ignoring the consideration of any other possibilities - such as that it is not the "righteousness" of their ideology that turns people away, but the vehemence with which they push it, even when it violates the rules of other communities where they are speaking. It is toddler logic, crying "unfair" even when the aspect in question is the epitome of fairness. Most of us move beyond that stage quickly in our lives, but for some reason that internet space chooses to revel in it.
And making everything a lot more confusing, some communities there have fine discussions within them. But overall it is an instance with problematic users, and more germane, problematic admins who protect the bullies rather than curtail them in order to fit in more with the rest of the Threadiverse. If you want some more of the intricate details, although as with anything historical some things have changed in the meantime, I wrote this post https://discuss.online/post/13916278, which contains lots of links to as close to primary sources as I could find about each matter.
Good to know my experiences are not out of the ordinary. You guys are right, as against censorship as I am, these guys can't be with everyone else. They follow people onto other threads, they did that with your linked article guy too, they did that with me too, and I'm not sure some of them don't have alternate accounts on our instances here that they troll the same people with.
Like one with 60 total comments over a few months that has popped up twice spouting incendinary accusations, asking people to chalk my reasoned argument as trolling and block and move on and accusing me of being a russian troll or .ml kind of shit. One of them I got into it after the first time I wandered onto their instance, guy just popped back up out of nowhere doing it again, I recognized the username, about the same period of time after I got into it again with their trolls there. Orchestrated something anyway.
Not only do they do this, they also admit it, they even brag about it, and they laugh about it and plan for ways to do it more effectively inside their echo chambers and safe spaces (e.g. lemmygrad.ml, another instance that is very friendly with Hexbear.net).
An excerpt from my aforementioned linked post:
It seems counterintuitive but sometimes in order to preserve freedom of speech, certain types of speech must be curtailed. Not everywhere, but in at least some spaces, to allow for quieter voices to speak who otherwise would not feel comfortable doing so when the background level of toxicity is too high.