That explanation honestly makes perfect sense to me. You can see the skeleton, still remaining, of a really cool and counterculture space where people can just talk to each other. I remember really liking the list of communities that were available when I first started poking around at Lemmy. But yes. If someone started being overbearing and saying that anybody who has X thing to say about Y country will get kicked out of the server immediately, then of course almost no one worth listening to will stick around and put up with that. Because why would they?

And then, it'll be populated only with shouty blowhards with all the same opinion, and become a joke of an instance. It's not a good outcome. The promise of the software, and surely the intent of the founders and developers, deserves a better flagship.