I think it's because people don't want to come off as endorsing elon musk/distance themselves from his weirder fans. I'll say though, 3 years ago is well after he called that one rescue diver a pedo so I don't know if the opening statement totally holds. Not that I really care that much.
Distancing is a good point, but maybe still not needed given that this is real critique. I would understand the distancing more if this review was praising FSD.
I think people did, to some extent. "Not an apple fanboy, but..." is a sentence i've heard more than once. But apple's figurehead never made as much of a habit as acting publicly obnoxious, not even during the steve jobs days
