> Naturally, I took down my project right away, gave it some time for feelings to cool, and sent Replit an apology.
Once you (Radon) did that, it is quite unlikely you would be able to go back. It would be perceived as an admission of the validity of their claims, at least to some extent; and more importantly, they will get it in their heads that, using threats, they can keep your project offline.
You then proceeded to apologize and recognize you may have hurt repl.it. That's another step of agreeing with their claim.
So, by the time you ask us
> "Is Replit right?"
The answer is basically - it's right enough for you to have semi-admitted they're right and acted accordingly. So, yeah, case closed basically.
Also, in your post you make all sorts "but what I did is harmless" arguments, which really aren't helping you - at least legally. If you're infringing on their legal IP rights, then it doesn't matter all that much that it's for a non-commercial purpose, or that you're not stealing their clients. Those are arguments for the part of the trial where the judge decides how much damages from you to award repl.it.
> Why would Replit do this?
Because it's a commercial company and it has reason to believe your activity will hurt their income, profits, or chances for survival.
> However, Replit’s actions in this case reveal hypocrisy
Commercial companies are almost necessarily hypocritical, since on the one hand, their interest is, and must be, the furthering of their owners' interests (so typically maximization of profits); but in this interest, it is useful for them to maintain an image of social responsibility, enlightenment, support of the furthering of technology etc. In some industries a company should also appear to be liberal, pro-LGBTQ, anti-racist and so on (especially if it has shady deals with the military-industrial complex, or foreign repressive governments etc).
So, yeah, sure, they're hypocrites, but you must have been living under a rock to believe that they may _not_ by hypocritical.
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Bottom line: If you thought you didn't violate your contractual and legal obligations to them; and that your project wasn't an illegitimate clone, you should have stood your ground, kept the project up, and stated as much.
You could then have told them that:
1. They would probably, or certainly, lose the litigation because they're wrong on the merits.
2. If they want to run a lawsuit with a bunch of expensive lawyers, they would waste a lot of their investment money on that, and you doubt their investors would appreciate it.
3. If they sued you, you make the whole thing very public - as you are obviously capable of doing - and the PR damage would be higher than whatever they hope to gain with their lawsuit against a zero-income zero-clients hobbyist project.