Maybe I have nostalgia glasses on but when I grew up on the internet forums only deleted posts that had illegal content.
They did not remove unpopular opinions.
Reddit is were actual discussion goes to die. Comes with the downvote ability I suppose.
Reddit is were actual discussion goes to die. Comes with the downvote ability I suppose.
And another particularly niche forum dedicated to a specific range of car chassis with a specific set of engine swaps that would permaban anyone who asked a question that could be answered via forum search. Which was at least mentioned in the forum rules you had to read before joining.
Forum mods were notorious power trippers on any forum I've been on. Sometimes it was worth it just to keep order. Other times it led to flame wars and forum splinters where a few people would start their own in competition to try and pick up the unhappy crowd.
So really nothing has changed because this is exactly how most discord/telegram servers, forums, subreddits, etc still function.
Back about 10-15 years ago I agreed to be a mod on a pretty large and popular forum, naively thinking I could help keep the place decent and useful for the users. What I discovered instantly were hidden mod forums where they made fun of all the users, laughed about arbitrarily banning people, and discussed about how they banned posts about illegal stuff mostly because it gave away their secrets. I gave that up quickly and decided I was all set with modding.
Mods on the “old forums” routinely deleted posts and banned users because they don’t like their opinion or hell even just as a “fuck why not it’s funny”.
Source: was a mod and active participant of such forums and saw it all the time. Did my fair share too.