I think they just continued the same course they had already started on with ResetEra and if NeoGAF had not imploded and Amir0x wasn't arrested and the shower story wouldn't have leaked. It would've been just like ResetEra today.
Perhaps even more woke, as that would've meant more ad money and access to the industry for Tyler 
Do you really think it wouldn't have ended like this with the likes of Besada and Amir0x?
I don't think THUG1 would have rolled along with it. He had some extreme bouts of pandering but that would have way too far for him.
What's happening on ResetEra is a trend and they are perhaps the worst and most extreme part of it by far but we're seeing in other places too.
Cyberpunk getting cancelled for being transphobic before its release, Jason rebranding himself into a communist revolutionary trying to free the oppressed workers (working for Bloomberg of all places)
and some people caught up in the #metoo storm simply for cheating are just a few examples. But we're seeing it in other places such as comedy as well. Never in a million years did I expect episodes of Fawlty Towers to be taken down but yet here we are.
This was to be expected as soon as the right-wing nutjobs (Jorpie, Sargon etc.) started to push against this woke movement but all they did was accelerate the decline towards censorship and cancel culture.
The pendulum will swing the other way again and end somewhere in the middle I hope. The internet mob has basically turned into the East German secret police (Stasi) combing through your posting history to see if there's an offense that warrants you to be shut-out from the community. Online communities are rapidly moving towards what was portrayed in the movie about eavesdropping in East Germany called The Lives of Others (German: Das Leben der Anderen).
The simple idea of "That's none of your business" doesn't exist anymore in 2020 and the list of things that are undisputed truths not to be debated or joked about just keeps growing.