There undoubtedly are unacceptable comments moderated. And I've seen a few personal attacks and unreasonable assumptions here before they were deleted.
That being said, I completely agree with what others said: I don't see a single community being that overwhelmingly positive and useful. Even now, in those pretty bad times, most people act in a reasonable way, offer suggestions, file bug reports, and are friendly towards the few devs that show up and towards Bjorn and MordredViking.
That forum has always been a place where I found extremely high-quality discussions even on super controversial subjects (nationalism threads asides), including slavery, colonialism or women in history. The standard of respect set by the moderation is extremely high, and I am absolutely glad that's the case.
It's never an enjoyable experience to read that people disagree with you, but saying that this forum is toxic is really mind-boggling. Given that the company released the lowest ever rated item on Steam, it's quite amazing that most people are sad and angered BUT remain mostly reasonable and helpful.
As others pointed out, the silence from the devs is creating the growing anger and toxicity. Comes a point where people are still frustrated by the situation but out of options so people resort to trolling or being childish. That's bad, for sure, but that's avoidable by simply communicating and giving the impression that you care (I'm not even saying that you should care about what we think, but just pretending to care would be a step forward).
Look at a thread like ETA for 1.31.2 that was turning super trollish and pointless until Mordred chimed in, and then it was respectful again.
Or the situation of Portugal: I've read extremely complex and detailed suggestions about Iberia from as far as I remember, growing concern about the region, to the point that there was a thread created every week or so to point issues in 2018. That was still mostly neutral, even if probably less constructive than the first suggestions. Then came GC, and some people turned to anger because the numerous excellent suggestions of 2016-7 had been ignored and all constructive criticism of Portuguese NIs had been ignored even if they were clearly researched. Since then, Portugal is a bit of a meme with some forumers posting about it randomly in unrelated threads, which might be considered toxic or pointless (if you really skew the line). But see where it comes from. And also look at how quickly things turn around when devs actually address this: the Maori thread was derailed by Portuguese enthusiasts as usual, and the simple fact a dev answered there instantly made the discussion non-trollish and friendly, even if what he said about Portugal was mostly generic and empty (we read you, sadly that was not the scope of the patch, but I share your concerns). This honestly isn't hard.
If some devs felt personally attacked or scared it's obviously extremely sad and unacceptable. I won't ask the victims to toughen up or change their behaviour because that's toxic privileged bullshit. I'll ask their colleagues to take a step forward and engage with the community and explain things, like they used to do. Because yes, I remember having great discussions with some devs in the past, ranging from country suggestions to UI or AI behaviour (I send a virtual hug to people like Chaingun or Trin Tragula even if they don't work on EU4 anymore and probably won't read this because they're busy working on another game with seemingly great patches and DLCs, from what I've read).
We should ask ourselves that, would we have their patience if we were them? I wouldn't have half of their patience, this forum would be a police state forum 
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