They want to be as harsh as possible now because their reputation is currently fucked. The longer a protest situation like this goes, the more user they lose. The faster they resolve it the faster people forget. They see no consequences of their actions and frankly I’m not so sure we see any in the near or medium distant future either. There was a tiny drop in ads revenue that already recovered mostly. Lemmy isn’t in a position yet to be as easily accessible as Reddit and others even less so.