I think you're blowing this mod thing out of proportion, I could see a lot of people wanting to be mods and signing an NDA if they were asked to simply thinking it applied to the information they see and the standard user doesn't. Ban reasons comes to mind.
I agree that an NDA for a public forum is questionable but on the other hand I can understand people wanting to be mods and not thinking twice about signing it before the last couple of weeks. Lots of them probably saw being a mod as an honor (for lack of a better word) at some point, it doesn't mean that they aren't entitled to change their mind or think constructively.
hashtalk is the centerpiece of Garza's whole scam operation which stretches beyond paycoin and includes Hashlets and other products before that. The censorship is used, along with the RA-RA cultists, the grandiose announcements, and manipulative fake accounts as necessary, to lure investors into the scam. That's why being a mod is so complicit in the scam. They are handling one of the critical parts of the scam, censorship. I'm sure not every mod knew, but I'm sure some knew what was up.
I don't see why they would have shared any incriminating evidence with MODs, it would make no sense to me.
I do agree with your statement that being a MOD means you have to censor but I think it was easier to do because of the turf wars, it's easy to ban a user who ends up saying "you're a piece of s***" after being taunted and called a troll by the consensus.
We're all humans, I'm sure they were thinking they would do good when they signed up and over time changed their mind and became uncomfortable. Some people may have a binary mind but it takes time for most to go from "this is great" to "I can't continue to do this".
Don't get me wrong, I don't think that it's all roses and pink, I just think people are blowing this issue out of proportion and there's no need to resort to name calling.
They weren't banning just users saying shit. They were banning any users asking wise questions that they didn't want to answer or to be seen by the followers. I know, cause I was one (the very first time I got banned).