Yes but the difference is that there were reasonable grounds to suspect that prolonged exposure to RF waves might possibly cause some harmful effects. The WHO didn’t categorize radio frequency radiation as a potential carcinogen based on no evidence at all:
https://www.iarc.who.int/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/pr208_E.pdf
The possibility of there being a link was not absurd, per se.
To be fair, the evidence about a link between cell phone radiation and cancer has been inconclusive for quite some time. After all, a series of inconclusive or null results doesn’t mean there is categorically no link – it could equally mean that more research is needed.
That said, I do agree that if there were a casual link in this case then it would have made itself apparent by now, given the huge increase in cell phone usage over the past few decades.
I’ve defended lemmy.ml in the past when people have blamed the entire instance for the actions of a solitary, overzealous moderator, but this genuinely concerns me:
This must have been action taken at the instance admin level, considering all those communities have different moderators.
Is there any way to probe the modlog to see which account it was?
All true, but that doesn’t disprove my point. The risk was non-zero, so it was still worth investigating.