Given that the OP compared their situation to the morality police in Iran, where dissenters tend to be hung from cranes I'm not so sure what restraints they think they're living under.

Few things are more cringeworthy than people in free Western countries pretending they're living in the Soviet Union. I say my honest opinion all the time. When people say this stuff, can we get a concrete example for something you "just can't say" ? I bet you five bucks I can guess the nature of that statement.

I personally do not have notable examples in my environment because of its specifics, but I have read a few interventions from Niall Ferguson (material from probably around 2018) about angry mobs impeding conferences of a "disliked" people (including his wife).

Anyway, to the theoretical point: if you have a wave of some phenomenon (e.g. "mobbing" - not in the present typical use, but in the present context) that expresses in different ways owing to the specifics of the hosting environment, the change in its expression is relatively accidental. If you had drunkenness in the lab and in the pub, what is more cringeworthy one could say that is to find it in the lab.

The two are interrelated.

Human sacrifice used to be a common cultural practice in many parts of the world.

In Europe, old men used to marry prebuscent teenagers.

We suppressed those things through vocal cultural shifts.

Again: the OP is not condemning vocal cultural shifts that demand restraint of unreasonable behaviour.

The OP is complaining about censorship.

You say tomato, I say tomato.