Has the tech industry always been this depraved? Or something fundamentally change within these people with the advent of Trumpism?
Learning actual history can be enlightening.
The FTX horror show was nothing like as anomalous as the PR of other places would have you believe, which is one reason VCs felt so OK flinging money at them.
No, I've seen individual firms in the various (social and otherwise) online media subindustries, like firms in every earlier media subindustry, each declaring themselves the one arbiter of what will be treated as true and/or worth transmitting on the platforms they operate, but... that's a very different thing than your claim.
> Seems difficult to not noticed with how loudly that role was cheered on by those who thought it would entrench their political ideology into society forever.
Some people may have cheered on individual moderation decisions (but typically the people invested enough to do so had an even longer list they objected too), but no significant group cheered on the fantasy you describe, nor did any significant group embrance the even more fantastic belief you describe as characteristic of the people cheering on that fantasy.
Some of the ideas mentioned in the article such as subscription policing and seasteading have been around for decades.
The arrogance of the wealthy goes back to the 80s, and reflects the moral change of "greed is good" replacing "money is the root of all evil" (which started long before, of course).
Maybe what's changed is that SV wasn't running the country 10-20 years ago?