This is something you see often nowadays, especially on social media. Activists get some controversial policy approved, or censor some already-existing content. Yet if you protest it, you get the "dude why do you care" fence-sitters. They'll tell you that it doesn't matter that much and that both sides are silly anyway. Often these people are in complete support of said policy/censorship, but if you point it out they'll just tell you that those extremists don't represent them (because they're the enlightened "centrists", of course), and you get nowhere.
I feel like this is a big problem. How do you deal with this?
Tell them to fuck off commie. They aren't fence sitters, they are the second group of commies, the incognito mode ones. You have the blatantly overt, then you have the ones who use human's desire to avoid confrontations, especially unnecessary confrontation, to manipulate anyone who isn't gungho about their objections into being silent. They are good at manipulating people. It's a tactic that most men consider undesirable because it is a woman's instinctual weapon.
It is demoralization propaganda. That's all.