I get that we need more users. But allowing the communities who were here first to get torn apart is not how you do that.

This is my big thought as well. Having a larger and more interconnected fediverse is all well and good, but letting people join and then cause problems isn’t going to do anything but drive new users away - especially if those trolls all congregate in communities that used to be among the more appealing parts of the fediverse. I can’t really fault the Beehaw mods for taking a temporarily heavy-handed approach in the middle of a user influx. Better that than being overrun and lose the primary selling point of the instance.