I don't really know the full details behind it. Someone created the PAL token, and certain people have control over the front-end. I'm not sure if they have made it fully clear who is in charge of what.

As to the coin, those involved in the development have gotten quite a bit, and there was a drop where people with Steem Power can get some, but we all can buy in if we want, and then determine how the PAL is distributed with what we Stake.

On the PAL side though, I haven't had a chance yet to see the mute in action. Is it like on Steemit where it collapses it, but you can clearly see that it was there and can expand it?

There are a few comments by the person mentioned in the post I linked:
https://www.palnet.io/community/@nopal4u/nopal4u-guidelines-1-0
You can look at the same post on a front-end like SteemPeak:
https://steempeak.com/community/@nopal4u/nopal4u-guidelines-1-0
They don't collapse. They don't even show.