>they're trying to distract from the Russian investigation of Trump's administration. Even giving them the benefit of the doubt, motive-wise, they're just being plain asshats by doing things like ignoring the wishes of his family.

Its not with admin support, its with admin ignorance or indifference T_D gets shit on by the site at large because T_D also does a metric fuckton of shitting. Other subs with rules like that are significantly smaller or brigade "nicely" Want to know how SRS gets away with using non-NP links? Because their "brigades" are ineffectual at actually brigading. They don't significantly alter vote counts, they might provide dissenting opinions in the comment sections, but even then 9 times out of 10 they're in a sub where that wouldn't be derailing. T_D gets shit on by the admins because they make so much more work for the admins. Seth Rich's family tells them to stfu, they double down, and make extra work for the admins. Squeaky wheel gets the grease. In conclusion: if you don't want special rules, don't be twats. If you insist on being twats, don't be surprised or act indignant when you get fucked.