Don't confuse any country's government or group in power with its people. Just think about wherever you live and how divided citizens are about different things that are done. There's pretty much always going to be a pretty significant chunk of the population that does not agree with what is happening.
Removed by an admin or another mod? There aren't really enough details in that story to know exactly what happened. It also seems strange that it says the sub went public briefly and then back to private. That doesn't really sound like an admin forcibly stopping the blackout.
Not sure exactly how they were hacked, but if the server is still compromised then changing your password now doesn't do any good.
Why are there so many comments that start with "@five"? I feel like there's something about how the site works that I'm misunderstanding. Isn't the user who posted the article automatically notified when someone posts a comment?