They will always keep people around who are just "problematic" enough as a blow off valve. Eventually they get the ban hammer.
I think it was Spandrell that wrote about how they'll ban enough people to disrupt having a sense of community. People cannot bounce comments off of one another, the dissenting voices look (and probably feel) like outliers, much fewer people are ever propagating dissent.. There are many deliberate effects of this.
But it's as much about attacking eveyone that holds the unapproved thoughts as it is about banning any particular figure.