actualyl at this point, unless there is a legal request or a serious security issue, we don't allow any unpublishes. we encourage transferring the package to the npm user and deprecating it. yay immutable registry!

If by "social" you mean bad decisions on settling a naming dispute, yes it was a social issue. That issue hasn't really been addressed publicly (the official policy still doesn't specify how disputes are decided by npm when no amicable agreement can be reached -- other than what essentially boils down to "we'll do what we feel is right").

The actual disruption however was solved by npm Inc disabling unpublishing (except for some very specific circumstances) and by creating a dummy account unpublished modules are reassigned to to avoid abuse (whereas previously anyone could simply claim unpublished modules and publish new versions).