Yeah, there should be different communities out there with different "community standards" of governance, if that's the community they want. Of course, it's always the people in charge that really choose, and then the members have to decide if they are gonna leave and possibly lose most of their friends they made there. In the case of PAL, it may only be a slight decrease in engagement, due to stake ensuring that those involved in PAL try to curate PAL posts.
PAL has responded since my post. Said a few things I wish they had said when they made the post about "muting". Of course, I don't know how normal people are supposed to magically know what rules from their discord apply to their front-end.
Of course, my main problem from the start has been their enforcement of rules that no one knew existed, using a punishment no one knew existed. And now I also have a problem with them thinking that people are supposed to know that some rules from a discord that some may have never been in may apply to a new front-end. Not all the rules apply either. We're also supposed to gleam some meaning from their name and Latin motto.
Guess every asshole on Steem has to be weary that he may cross some line that we're not really sure about where it is yet.