Seems a bit far-fetched to me tbh.
My recollection is that a few years ago, around the time of the 2016 American election, the Gog forum was really terrible, with various political extremists continually shouting at each other. I'm honestly glad that many of those users are gone and don't think a return to that state would be a good thing, so on some level it might even be understandable that current moderation errs on the side of caution. I still think it's often too heavy-handed though.

It does not change a thing. In every forum you have forum rules and everybody who ever used a forum should be aware of this. So if I enter a forum I will first read the rules that's the usual way.

Last I looked they were inside the forum as a sticky.

That's what I am just about to see for myself by the examples people gave me. So far it seems as if "politics" in the discussions is the big issue but I am not sure yet if that really is the only problem. I need a bit more time to read through those threads.

Did I do that? I just said that I think (meaning that's my guess/opinion) that the CMs are there to prevent toxicity.

No, we can't. That's why I said imo - meaning "in MY opinion". It's an educated guess nothing more.

I also never said that. The actual question is "can a business really do whatever they want with and in their own forum" and the answer - even though it's probably a thing you don't like to hear - is "yes, they can". The other question however that should be asked is "SHOULD a business really do whatever they want with and in their own forum?" - the answer to this is much more debatable given the fact that most people using the forums are paying customers.

If the real rules are different then it changes everything.

You haven't looked properly. The sticky has a short paragraph which amounts to, "don't be a dick" with a link to the forum policy on the support website.


It is hard to tell what part of it was an opinion given how and what was said.

In general that isn't the case. There's number of EU directives that say otherwise.
The problem is that internet companies want to be businesses when it benefits them but pretend they are not when it doesn't. This has let some companies grow large and ingrained these abuses.
For example Steam hiding game discs in shops that didn't work unless you had an account in order to download the game.
Another are third parties encouraging websites to spy on their users for profit.

Business can also be told what to do from somewhere else against their interests e.g asset stripping shareholders.

First off, with this I am NOT questioning mod actions...that said: Was it rule breaking in some way, or did the OP request it???

(The above thread just asks if the new version of galaxy is stable, it was answered, and one other post was made...then it got locked with no reason given as to why[if the OP asked for it it's hard to tell without a blue posting a reason at the end of it])