Unmoderated user generated nsfw forums were (are?) a beacon for dubious to illegal content. I forget the specifics, but didn’t Pornhub have to pivot from accepting a firehose of free user submitted content after failing to moderate sufficiently? User generated nsfw + free just seems like an impossible balance.

I don’t think the option to put some subreddits behind a paywall is necessarily a bad thing. Hopefully the federated link aggregators are in a better place now to absorb another exodus if reddit does scare off a bunch.

The 5 users will only talk to each other, or you have to connect out to the regular phone network? Group calls? Messaging? And when you say secure, do you mean end to end encrypted?