Agreed. Another factor here is how the audience for debate is changing. The author of the article themselves is mass reviewing debate arguments on YouTube. Not so long ago this would have been far more difficult (and thus be seen by far less people). Making these debate arguments widely available to the wider Internet implicates that a simple intellectual exercise where you argue a policy position you see as problematic could help to make that policy position more likely to pass in the future if you are very effective in your arguments...