He did. People don't remember, but his home page used to have articles regarding age of consent, which he later took down.

So? Don't make these clicks and you'd never see them.

> The political control of internet arguments is more obvious than ever, and the quest for advertising money

Advertising money has nothing to do with it - FSF doesn't need advertising money. They're just live in deathly fear of the woke Red Guards, as many before them (e.g. Mozilla) - and that fear may be very well justified.

> but I'm fairly sure I can start and run a website/subreddit/blog for whatever niche idea and be left alone.

Sure you can. If you can do without: hosting, DDoS protection, DNS, advertising, search engines, social media, payment processing, etc. All those have recently been engaged in deplatforming people for political considerations. But yes, you are free to lay your own cable infrastructure, set up your own data centers, build out your own internet, and there have you own website about whatever you want, completely free.