I'm personally glad the story made to the front page again as I find it very relevant today and I've never read it before.

Is it more reasonable to think that this is the beat of a baseless drumhead conspiracy, or that influential people are genuinely changing their minds about very large issues, despite the profitability of keeping silent?

Here's the same story from 2017: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/08/08/my-google-...

I don't think that makes it less relevant in general, but there's nothing "new" here. There doesn't need to be anything new for the point to still be interesting, but it does reveal something about our bias towards the "new" in our political conversation and analysis.