For people who have never seen the Steam's off-topic forum, it's here:
steamcommunity.com
What's the problem? Seems tame.
I see insane things from one side of the major echo chamber that is reddit. Where is the calls about their hate speech, oh right it's not really about that its about people disagreeing with them. I do not like any politician or forum that pushes "hard moderation" ie censorship. Especially enforced by government or by an extreme biased "moderation team" as I have seen it first hand grow out of control and an echo chamber form.
Recent example: I just got banned from r/law on reddit. Why? Because the mod didn't like my opinion. I called out the sub for not being about law , but only politics and not the subject at hand. just a hate group against their political rivals. and I said Tulsi was gorgeous to someone who mentioned her. I asked why I was banned and got "for being a moron and a racist/sexist". Just because I called someone pretty and questioned why the law forum was not actually about law.
It would be like a neogaf being about something other than games, yet it is a games discussion group.
The mod then went and muted me for 28 days so I couldn't respond back. If these people had power out of forums we would all be under the boot. It's crazy.
Reddit reminds me of what this site was like from 2013 or so to 2018. And what resetera is like now. Full of censors and overly offended people that instead of hearing someone else's opinion, they call you names and want you deplatformed/banned. I don't want steam turning into that. I love that we can actually have discussions and see user reviews not just curated mainstream reviews.
Steam forums are free speech. Steam forums have game specific forums and groups. Something epic didn't do with their store and it is shit because of it. People need to give feedback and discuss. New ideas and tips and software help for games are all over places like steam, gog, and older game specific forums. Reddit has it too for particular titles, but their mainstream popular subs are all one sided circle jerk politics and it's horrible.
Granted legit bullying, etc, sure, I get that, but there is a fine line with the whole "problematic thing". I think neogaf does it right today, I'm sure steam has some rules in place too.