15 years ago things were quite different:

* There were far fewer tech billionaries.

* The tech billionaries were not publicly associating with far-right figures or cryptofascist belives, or at least were doing so quietly while promoting ideas of technology as social progress

* A lot of the tech startups were seen as fighting entrenched interests grounded in regulatory capture and people had the illusion that the next generation of companies supplanting these wouldn't succumb to the same factors.

* Donald Trump as a phenomenon of current politics did not quite exist yet, so we didn't have to witness these people sucking up to him

That's just for starters.