I've been thinking about how tor and anonymous networks need to be the standard internet for social communities, especially with potential for war looming, even being slightly inconvenient to the state could be costly.

The problem is that tor is almost entirely just crime. It's a big turn off to normal people even though normal people should be on it and shouldn't be writing any of their opinions on clearnet, no matter how innocuous they think their opinions are.

But perhaps I've just failed to find it seeing as the criminals have much more budget to spend on marketing and getting their name out there at every gateway into TOR because they actually have a dollar to make unlike people who simply want a free place to chat without contributing to the norm of submitting content to the most useful data-collection operation on the general public the government has ever had access to.

Has anyone heard of such forums?

I have heard about dread, but it's pretty much 90% down right now.