Techno nerds discussing tradecraft is not inherently about engineering. According to a standard of a discipline, where is the engineering discussion here? Examples? I'd estimate that fewer than 1:1000 topics here deal directly with anything that can be considered genuine engineering. There's almost no vocabulary of engineering presented here. When it appears it's treated like lore from old magicians.
Moreover, this forum is fundamentally political because capital is political and this site is maintained as a heater in an incubator used by venture capital. This can't be a controversial observation; it's a simple reading of the masthead.
Correspondingly, there's a high degree of censorship exercised on these forums, ostensibly in the service of a purity of a generally non-existent engineering orientation.
So trying to pretend that plain nerding out is engineering, while priding and promoting censorship of your own politics in deference to "jobs" offered by venture capitalists is servile. And trying to avoid the contradiction is juvenile.
But then look at the leadership of the industry: Cultists and demagogs, some fairer, many fouler, all political, because that's the nature of capital.
Of course last thing house slaves are permitted is talk about their situation, and the best know to censor themselves.
So yes, where else can one go to discuss one's own interests? Certainly not on the plantation.