As someone who's moderated a community, this is exactly what things feel like. Especially given that our community has an explicit focus on freedom of expression (and what a thorn in our side that's ended up being)

We've adopted pretty vague rules as a result, with a lot of room for interpretation, and rather than changing the rules often we've just updated our interpretations and communicated them with the community.

It's been a slow boil. But things are different now than they were years ago. Not just because the community has grown but (at least from my perspective) because the tone of the internet seems to have shifted slightly.

We at least are fortunate to have the capability to build tools to identify behavior that might be an issue even without taking automated action. But "I'm not touching you" behavior is sometimes hard to catch when people avoid certain key words, at least until confronted. It's a pain, really.