Previously forums were mostly highly categorized and discussions had to be kept on topic as going off topic was considered incredibly bad etiquette. With yahoo answers there was only a few days for answers to post before the question asked had to judge best answer. Irrelevant and off topic responses were deleted as spam.
Since Reddit, and the way Reddit is, posts end up being buried after a few hours and if a discussion manages to start you can guarantee it will be diverted in the responses. This isn’t even restricted just to conversation on important conspiracies, such as what we need to do about the Jews (which would quickly get deleted anyway). Even some random kid asking for homework help on the Norman conquest of England will end up getting comments diverting the discussion to Putin and trans.
This has meant that it encourages people to learn to engage in disjointed and divergent thinking- previously a sign of mental disability.
the problem with reddit is, just about anything you want to say on any given topic in any subreddit is "against the rules"
it can be totally unrelated to politics or conspiracies. it can be about your opinion on piercings or something totally random you want help with. if you ask an important question -- especially on a taboo topic (like being harassed by gang-members involved in a secret sex club ring and asking people in that subculture how serious this is) -- will immediately get banned and people will refuse to answer and call you crazy.
if you're lucky at all someone will see you posted and direct message you on the topic, generally warning you "never to talk about this to anyone"
but even less taboo topics, even stuff like piercings ive got banned for just saying I did my lobe piercings myself. its ridiculous. the rules basically cover everything anyone would ever want to say or ask about a specific topic, and if the subject is taboo like what I mentioned or conspiracies, they just make up a rule to ban you from the subreddit after posting.
its bad. at least on a forum the rules were simple and not against posting about specific topics/ideas/things. so you could go into a forum or chat room and openly speak about anything related to the topic at all with legitimate response. but theres like community hierarchies protecting secrets and controlling access to certain information and its a real problem.
they enforce you away from posting anything you want to, on any topic whatsoever, so half the time I go there I wonder "whats the point, if my post doesnt get removed and I dont get banned I will simply get flamed and downvoted"
its not even a question. and it doesnt matter about politics. its that rules there arent only based on behavior, but specific topics and subjects. too much is taboo on most of them for them to be of any use to anyone.
speech is in fact so restricted and censored that you have to read and remember a laundry list of often arbitrary banned topics and god forbid you forget once and casually mention something from real life about something small or something that gets misinterpreted. instaban, no chance to remediate, ip locked so alt accounts can never get back into that subreddit and the individual is simply banned from all speech related to this topic. even for something as simple as "I did my lobes myself and got better results than a lot of professional jobs" -- it was against the rules to encourage self-piercing, which I did not, but now im banned for life from a stupid subreddit over just that little bit.
the thought police are insanely strong and exist there to keep current subculture hierarchies in power. not just political ones. it goes from simple business promotion to outright censorship of topics.
moving to only reddit had one benefit -- it funneled every subculture into one singular forum. this makes it so if you get outcast from the one community, your social credit is now fucked and you just lose participation in an entire subculture. same as getting deplatformed.
if there were multiple individual forums related to the topic, another forum would accept the banned member back into the subculture and social-access-control would fail.
literally every single time I want to post a question on reddit I think "I really need help and want to ask my question, but its against the rules... where do I go?"
its almost like Id have to work my way up personally into the group of people who can answer my question and ask in person, but everything is organized online so good luck on that!
whats the use of a forum if the question you need to ask is against the rules? what if everything you have to contribute to others is also against the rules? just to show off you already have the answers but cant tell anyone else ever???
so asking how to get into the scenes or what to do is against the rules, because you already have to be in on it and know the answer in order to ask the question. what the fuck kind of forum is that?