Re-reading the organizer's email, I can seee their point. Politics could turn to be a blackhole topic that absorb all discussion energy, and then no one would leave the talk thinking about the "evil big tech" topic any more...

If I were the author's friend I'd tell him this, he threatened to derail his own presentation including the screenshots of political news.

The 1% of websites taking 98% of traffic should be alarming, but the focus-stealing headline there is "Income Inequality". If he had not put that as a headline and just made a throwaway oral comment (writing it down got him in trouble, and as I said, steals the focus!), it might've been more effective.

That's a good point: it is easy to derail with politics, I agree. Though living in a politically polarized country I just ignore political examples. Yeah, the guy is lefty, righty, religious, atheist, liberal, conservative. Ok, so what can I learn from him about the topic at hand? I don't have to become gay just because he's using Gay Pride backgrounds :)