Anyway, my theory is that the new-ish overlords at the Fool simply don’t care abut the free boards. If they live, fine. If they die, fine. It would be nicer if they died a natural death rather than were murdered, which might cause a minor backlash, but otherwise, who gives a shit? (Whoops, I said a bad word. No censorship! Hooray!)

Totally agree. My theory is that enough of the paid users also use the free boards and that's why they the free boards around. And there isn't much incremental cost to keeping the free boards (one has a paywall, one doesn't. BFD). But they don't want any hassle with the free boards either. The most popular board was Political Asylum. They shut that one down when they transitioned. Why? My guess is it took the most time to moderate.

So TMF tolerates the free boards, but that's as far as it goes. The axe is swift and sharp when it comes to problematic posters. I was surprised they booted Steve. I didn't have him pegged as problematic. Now that I think about it, I don't think I was problematic either. But the axe isn't paid to think.