Was it not the joke, that Stanford people need everyone to know it
What are you even talking about? The article is about guaranteeing Stanford a place on the internet that is similar to twitter, but one that it controls (like mastodon) and Elon Musk can't shut down on a whim if he doesn't like what Stanford is tweeting.
So that the Stanford dean can shut it down on a whim instead. So they can enforce their own policies.
Could this be done with less than $2 million per year in administrative overhead costs? What if somebody said something true that makes Stanford look bad? A way of adjudicating this and other issues such as racial equity pertaining to Mastadon must be managed by at least ten people earning $200k+/yr in order to sufficiently dilute responsibility amongst people willing to fight to preserve their sinecures. Otherwise, some other unrelated $200k/yr administrator can come along and shut it down.