Nice post angel.
Regarding ATS - Definitely some sort of social engineering going on there. There seems to be a 24 hour team working there that immediately, within seconds sometimes, that can jump in to discredit certain subjects or start scrubbing threads to bury any rational debate before it gets started. Watch chemtrail threads in particular and see the disinformation team jump into action. Definitely a controlled opposition site IMHO.
As for the DIF I have even had posts scrubbed whilst still writing them and If I have managed to post they have been deleted in, literally, seconds. So someone is keeping a "very" close eye on what is said there.
As you suggest, internet forums, the bigger ones especially, seem to actually to discourage real life interaction of its members, which doesn't surprise me at all - just more of the same societal "fracturing" agenda we see all around us.
Forums are doing exactly what they were meant to do - keep you right were they can see you, watch what you are saying and thinking, and not sociallising or bonding in real life. Same reason pubs were killed off by the smoking ban - they were hubs of real personal interaction, that couldn't be monitored and god forbid that the slaves might get some uppity ideas by talking to each other...can't have the revolting peasants or is that peasants revolting and getting ideas beyond their station
So, cheers again - a very thought provoking thread.