The far woke extremists having a full lock on all major social media -through like-minded people in those companies and the government- gave them a significant amount of power to dictate the direction of travel and silence any who opposed their agenda. They were able to give the impression of being a far more significant % of the population than they ever actually were, just by making the majority afraid to speak against them.
I don't think it was 'obvious' they could be stopped until they lost Twitter and the dam burst, but now that it has the companies have to try and get on the right side of it.