People like Elon are particularly good at generating the image of disproportionate criticism, because he is the highest of high-profile, and he is a classic modern provoker. I.e. he invites rebuke and bitterness by mocking/trolling and generally being petty/childish toward those he disagrees with, which can work in his favor ("look at all the haters"). In this case, it's pushed even further by the fact that he is so aggressively pro-free-speech and critical of those who may take a more measured approach, and yet we keep seeing him apparently falling into the exact same trap of "well OK except for this case - let me modify the rules to be more subtle/pragmatic", except the result is perhaps now even less free than before by his own apparent definition. The irony/hypocrisy is mountainous.
Additionally, "the same people who X are now Y" is an extremely common fallacy. It may be true, but much more often than not, you're assuming that two groups of people are mostly the same people when they are not (i.e. that every person is either left or right, pro-Elon or enti-Elon, etc; and every opinion a person expresses must fall on one side of each line). It's very easy to project one's internal concrete images of enemies onto the enormous, dynamic masses of the internet, or a particular forum, and "discover" hypocrisy.