I have been a member of the graphene os matrix room for some months, hoping to someday get a pixel and switch to it. I am a software advisor and have recommended GOS to a lot of my students. I have just posted a link of this lemmy thread to the matrix room, with no special intention but to share and talk about this. It took 3 mins or so for them to delete the message and ban me. So, this totally and radically confirms for me that Graphene OS staff is not a nice one, and that they obviously fear something, being incapable of talking openly, so I wouldn't trust them. Thanks for the heads up.
The admin of the matrix room contacted me afterwards. They feel harassed by threads like this and also feels that this thread is having positive comments towards GrapheneOS censored and only negative comments kept.