The only thing I can think of is the new corporate diversity/woke organizations that want to cultivate an environment where companies need to pay them to keep things from becoming a PR nightmare (that is a new type of manufactured threat). Organizations haven’t even been effective at coercing companies about global labor practices (Nike’s slave wage factories in China), but somehow this new attack vector of social propriety has been extremely effective.
It’s been iteratively effective. Pointing out Nike has 1, then 2, then 3 slave wage factories never escalated the situation. Pointing out Rogan antivax stuff, then the N-word compilation, and perhaps soon that he used steroids, has been hyper effective to reach a knock out blow. By the time we get from ‘Elon’s factories segregates black people’ to the n-th ‘and his ex said he was verbally abusive’, he could be done.
Something to keep track of, or certainly pay some people to ward something like that off. That would make the most sense.
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/ford-motor-co/summary?id=D0...
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/general-motors/summary?id=D...
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/toyota-motor-corp/summary?i...
Not particularly hard, as it turns out.
You would hope people in high places wouldn’t be petty or personally vindictive, but there is plenty to gain from the personal rush you get ruining someone’s life (or at least a couple of months of it).
Happens sadly more frequently than you’d hope.