Just so we’re clear. I wrote a harsh (but fair) post about hiding posts here, after which I thought I might get banned. But I decided to postpone its publication. As time passed, some posts were opened and my post was no longer needed.
However, I am not risking to publish for the third time my post which was blocked first in this thread, then in the hidden thread.
So to speak now of complete freedom of discussion is a bit rash.
Some people were accidentally banned because there were literally 3000 people saying “stop taking about politics” in some way or another.
“Some people were accidentally banned” — I like that a lot. 
Most people that were banned, were banned because we hid the off-topic post and then they would post a slur. So then they screenshotted their “innocent” post, not the thing that actually got them banned, and tried, and succeeded, to start outrage.
It should be remembered that this is the point of view of a biased person (the instigator of this scandal) — so what posts were hidden and what exactly (what statements) people were banned for — remains in question.
I suspect that if his message had been separate (detached from all the previous politics), then everyone here would have just laughed and that would have been the end of it. But apparently it was the last straw (trigger).