You put it more eloquently than I could. @dan does bring up good points. We can’t monitor everything. But Meta is sort of a whale in a pond of goldfish. It stands out. And I personally don’t think should be given any benefit of the doubt based on their history.

Nothing would get me to delete my account quicker than federating with a Meta instance.

Them saying that they didn’t remove mods because of the protest is ridiculous. I’ve spent time on enough subreddits where the mods weren’t “active and engaged” and seemingly absent. But now this is suddenly one of the most important rules the admins are deciding to enforce. I wonder how many mods have been removed for not being “active and engaged” from subreddits that didn’t participate in the protest, because I certainly haven’t heard of any as of yet

I agree with you. If you find enjoyment in that part of the fiction, indulge in it. Who cares if it’s not officially canon. There’s still merit to those stories.