To give an unrelated example, there's currently a huge drama explosion in the vtuber world due to Person X trying to strongarm an artist into not working with Person Y, while X and Y being ostensibly best friends with each other in public.

People do not like being lied to, and they especially do not like someone lying to them while concretely making their life worse.

> compared to the value of honest debate among the most powerful in tech

Yet again this seems to be using "honest" as code for "racism".