Way To Go SvN!
I share your concerns Timothy. I'm an old timer on the internet. I hung out at the world's first computer store, and saw the internet for years as "a great wealth of content on public FTP sites". I'm fearful that much of what the internet took away from governments and Old Big Media (newspapers, network tv, and radio) is now being givewn to New Big Media; Facebook, Medium and Twitter, etc. Free speech is not so much being curbed or curated now, as it is herded and monetized like cattle. There's way too much pressure for content authors to let themselves be branded with someone else's brand mark and have their worth be determined by what they can bring at auction in terms of advertising "eyeballs".
I guess if it's better for any particular content author or publisher to play "the game" or not is mostly up to their own self interest. I hope more politically correct alternatives will arise, and that more content producers will choose to take a stand and go the way of SvN. I wonder what those more correct alternatives might look like.