I have no idea what happened during the early 2010s. I grew up during the late 90s (born in late 80s) learning about the internet and its philosophies. Allowing Free speech still is the hill I'd like to die on. But the new generation of people, even here on HN and the internet hacker personalities I used to align with have turned so pro-censorship that I don't believe I'm in a proper reality/timeline anymore.
The fundamentals of free speech are just easier to uphold when the forum (Internet) is much smaller and the participants (hacker culture, chat rooms) are more uniform. Both the size of the forum and the diversity of the participants has changed - that's what happened.