> None of them were forced to follow the majority. This is a huge important difference.
Quite the contrary, it’s a meaningless difference. Most systems have that feature.
Imagine everyone in your friends circle uses Signal. Then they decide to change to WhatsApp but you and one other refuse to do so. No one forces you to follow the majority, you simply deal with the consequences of not doing so. For example, you may have less of a voice in the decision of where to go to dinner together because you're not part of the main conversation.
You are (once again?) changing the actors and the power relationships between them and pretending it doesn't matter.
It's one thing to have "your friends" moving from one network to another. It's a completely different thing to have a network where there is an owner who can kick you out unilaterally.
None of the people that are using Ethereum Classic are disallowed to ever use ETH if they so want. They haven't been censored to continue participating in that network. It's just that to participate they must accept that the consensus of truth has changed.
Quite the contrary, it’s a meaningless difference. Most systems have that feature.
Imagine everyone in your friends circle uses Signal. Then they decide to change to WhatsApp but you and one other refuse to do so. No one forces you to follow the majority, you simply deal with the consequences of not doing so. For example, you may have less of a voice in the decision of where to go to dinner together because you're not part of the main conversation.