You and I have had very different experiences. I don't mean to invalidate yours however.

There's some rogue admins and mods, sure, but I haven't come up against them much in over two years and it's not like I've been walking on eggshells.

Where have you experienced this the most? Certain instances or mods?

Edit: and fwiw, in my eyes it was clear from the beginning that dot world set out to be reddit on the fediverse

And I remain relatively neutral on this. It's their hardware, resources, and time. I didn't have to sign up there.