The Freenode to Libera incident is a great example of how using protocols allows for a community to mitigate most damage from bad actors both external and internal. I'm not saying damage wasn't done by Andrew Lee during his attempted coup. IRC as a whole lost many important FOSS projects due to Lee's channel take-overs. But most of the community of daily users just moved to the new digs and continues to carry on.

Is it a good example? That incident was pretty much the last nail in the coffin for IRC. Most open source communities have moved to Discord now.

why would you hedge yourself with a double-negative here? It was because of (open) protocols and not services that people could easily decamp and setup afresh.

Interoperability has always been paramount, but gets so easily forgotten.