I no longer really trust Carcosa anymore because I find it hard to believe that anyone would think that other people, especially people hostile and distrustful of you like liberal and fascist admins of a shitty Reddit clone, would fall for such a transparent ruse.

That’s fair. It’s not nice to see someone you (used to) trust lying. I’m not trying to convince you and I don’t think you’re trying to convince me either, we’re just sharing our thoughts.^[1] I’ve personally been in similar situations wrt being the middleperson between a lot of groups and having to try to manage everything. It lead to me doing a lot of the same stuff.
I don’t know if carcosa expected it to work, but I trust that carcosa hoped it would and that they ended up calculating that the positive outcome was worth risking the most negative outcome. I’m not saying it’s a good thing to do, but I’m saying it’s understandable and completely rational. Carcosa acknowledged their mistake and offered to step down, which I really do not think they should do. It was a mistake, but we all make mistakes.