I'll save the trouble : agree to disagree.
My understanding is that there are no metrics, such as donation money or site traffic, that is clearly affected by the
current/past state of TL.
I bolded current/past, because there is no difference in "offensive" material posted today and offensive material posted 10 years ago. Hell, it's probably more sanitized now than it was back then. If you don't believe me, search for currently banned words and see what you get.
The major difference between TL back then, and now, is that now there isn't much besides "offensive" material. For whatever reason, be it poor staff decisions in the past, the past non-offensive material contributors moving on with their life, competition from other social networks, etc. TL turned into what it is today. The only people that have remained, and post everyday, have their needs met by TL. Those needs tend to be shit posting at other people's expense, for the most part, who by the way are fine with being insulted and joked about, and they wouldn't come back if they weren't.
And what TL is today is seen as unacceptable to the current staff at the top. Unacceptable because they're not in on it (when's the last time a senior staffer was a well liked regular?) and unacceptable because the current national zeitgeist is to avoid offensive material. And that's fine, it's a private discussion forum that can be run however they see fit.
Whether TL is what it is/was or if it's a social forum akin to EADD... someone will not like it. It just so happens that the people at the top who have power happen to not like it as it is right now.
As (former) drug users we should be used to what we like not being accepted. Whether that something is the decision to use drugs or to make fun of somebody, choices are being made for us and we're not allowed to make that choice for ourselves. That to me makes this decision kinda ironic. Harm reduction is essentially a movement about freedom of information. That information we believe should be out there, even if the majority of people disagree with us and that information's availability, those people being law enforcement or even the family of people who were killed by drugs such as heroin. We want that information to stand by itself and to let people make their own choices about its use. So here we are, us making that choice for other people and not letting them do it themselves.
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I talked to lysis, and everyone is more than welcome to post at
https://www.reddit.com/r/bluelight/ while TL situation is being sorted.