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Is it really surprising though? Woke culture is a predominantly west coast product and coincidentally that's where a lot of influential software offices are situated. I think what's more surprising is that people in our industry still pretend like American software practices are politcally agnostic.

Strongly disagree, by definition it's the abuse that compromises the metric not the abusability. The distinction is important because it means that with a large and rapid enough rotation of obfuscated targets you can find out what you need while mitigating the bulk of intentional metric abuse.

The simplest answer is that journalism relies heavily on credibility and BuzzFeed's brand has almost none of that as far as the public is concerned. If this was the WaPo or NYT they could probably get away with the usual "We'd tell you but that would be unprofessional."

I doubt the implications are a primary motivator considering the US has been increasingly distancing itself from China anyway. Considering the makeup of academics it seems a lot more likely that you simply don't get to support republican affiliated talking points without having enough clout to survive a credibility attack.

Even if your evidence and procedures are correct you'll still be accused of something vague and indefensible like racism because your observations are somehow at fault for contributing to racist attitudes. As long as Social Justice, and by extension so social politics, focuses on belligerantly attacking any potential for dissent the situation is only going to gravitate more towards voluntary censorship.