This:

We will not tolerate Very Serious Charge X. This post did not do X, but other people did and this post says something critical of us so we removed it.

construct is quite something.

You see it happen all the time as there is a large supply of suitable trolls.

Company makes anti-consumer move.

Consumers react with backlash, including some that go off the rails.

Company issues statement: "Our staff have received harassment over this issue. We condemn harassment in any form. We will no longer discuss this issue"

Bonus points if the visible staff members among the incident are of a minority, then they get to paint all their critics as racist/sexist/whatever, rather than consumers unhappy with being nickle and dimed/recieving a product different than promised/etc

For clarity and for the context of this thread => From GitLab: We did decide to moderate this post for review, as there have already been credible personal and physical threats against GitLab employees in this issue thread. GitLab cannot tolerate posts that threaten our employees (or anyone) personally, or posts that we believe may further inflame threats that have already been made. While this particular post did not contain a personal threat to anyone, we were concerned it would further inflame this situation. We understand that those who follow the issue already received the comment.

You can stop copy and pasting this response everywhere, it's already in the screenshot.

Censoring a respectful employee resignation, regardless of whatever "spin" you try to justify it with, is not a good look for your company.

You're guideline here is basically it makes gitlab look bad and you want to hide it to avoid further negative feedback. The thread is already locked so no further trolling can be posted in that thread.

I am not at all surprised if it was the VP of Engineering, the author of the issue, who would be the one to censor her resignation. It would not be the first time he would be spinning things around and creating a culture of fear. I am not at all surprised she would face retaliation.

No personal attacks please. They only hurt, not help, and any substantive point can be made without them.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You removed her comment after she accused you of retaliatory behavior. Just think about that for a little bit.