Without direct action it's just nerds reading out their blog posts about politics, which couldn't be less interesting.
Congress seems to keep growing so perhaps this is just serving a broader audience. But knowing a lot of long-time attendees, I'm certainly not alone in thinking Congress is starting to be less interesting than it used to be. I'm certainly not trying to say the event sucks though, there's still a plenty of interesting stuff happening.
Let's be real, the videos get far to much eyes to break the law. There are smaller talks and groups where it looks different.
And making stuff up that was never talked about there to start a political movement to get that party banned? Yeah nice democracy and journalism there.
There were many stories where people lost faith in politics (e.g. after Chernobyl), so people gathered together to do stuff on their own. I think being "social" (to all people), decentralized and mistrusting authorities is just a left thing. so that's just a natural thing imho
But chernybyl isnt the only or primary reason.
Every year you got new people who find out the hard way that the CCC is a place for ardent activism, not for critical thinking.
The people who stay do it to meet their friends there.