I don't think they shifted their stance, I think the stances of the left and right shifted around them. For example I remember during Trumps first term they announced a rather sensible stance on the internet/net neutrality via an official blog post, and shortly after (maybe even the next day) it turned out that intern who wrote the piece was fired and it was removed. It's not that the stance was particularly anti-right etc, but that the positions of the right solidified more towards pro-big business rather than anti-regulation as they had previously been trying to be.
I worked at EFF during that time, and this is a weird story that I’ve not heard before. EFF doesn’t let interns write blog posts (at least not with a lot of supervision) and certainly wouldn’t sack someone for getting something wrong — partly because that’s a terrible lesson to teach someone just starting out in law or activism, but also and more pragmatically it risks being a PR nightmare.
I concede it might be a mangled version of some other incident — EFF’s network neutrality policy during that time was /extremely/ subtle and we often struggled to express it without annoying some colleague organization or another. Do you remember any other details, or link to coverage of it?
I read parent as saying the intern worked for the Trump admin.
yes it was this, not the EFF but the Trump admin, it was a surprisingly normal and level headed policy take, and I was pleasantly surprised, but then it turned out it wasn't their official stance, it was removed and replaced with a statement and stance that was nearly the opposite. But for the life of me I can't find it again, but I swear I didn't imagine it.