This is why when a social media site gets past a certain size, the admin team and the moderation need to be clearly defined, and siloed from each other's core responsibilities, so the admin team focuses on running the site and the mod team focuses on making it sing.
Looks like the people actually moderating clearly had a handle on the situation. The admin was clearly overworked and didn't agree with the direction the community was taking, and made a quick decision that was poorly thought out.
The reason admins are admins is because they're good at running machines. You can turn a machine off if it's broken, and change how it runs with the flip of a switch.
A community requires a much different approach, and never, no matter how wise the decision, reacts well to being told how to act. It takes a different skill set to properly moderate and run a community than it does to run a server - in fact most admins I know make notoriously bad moderators (myself included, although I'm no longer an admin).
To be honest, the admin here is acting exactly like your stereotypical libertarian tech-bro computer guy who pays lip service to the left while pocketing the more palatable pieces of the philosophy of the right. I've worked with a lot of them in tech. LGBTQ+ is hard stretch for these guys in general - they'll declare gays have rights but won't march in Pride, use slurs when in like company, and generally see LGBTQ+ as a lifestyle choice and not an inescapable biological state of being.
They don't understand that it's not a switch you can flick on and off.
Just glad I'm on the Fediverse where this particular admin's meltdown doesn't matter too much, but I have a feeling Squabblr's fate is going to be the same as Voat (which was cool for about two weeks before the alt-right overran it).
quortez
ArtieShaw
Ashtear
philip_the3rd