If you read Off Topic on GAF you will know the ruling class there inhabits the crazy corner of the far left political spectrum. Many do nothing but post on GAF and they shout down anyone with a different opinion. They do not live in the real world. Most are unemployed or have jobs and lives so empty that all they do is read and post on GAF. The forum seems like an SJW hugbox, but there are plenty of more civilized left, moderate and right leaning posters. They've gotten sharp enough to walk the line and keep their mouths shut/stay out of certain topics because they want to keep their account for whatever reason.
This really goes way back to the beginning of Feminist Frequency and earlier. The mods have been beating on the user base for years trying to make sure their membership tows the line with whatever nutty social or political views they hold.
Gamergate - there were really just a couple/few threads the first day or two this started blowing up, and some people made some harmless if colorful jokes about the situation in the threads. The mods who are basically all thin skinned pussies and a few backseat mods and prolific SJW posters got offended and locked the threads and started banning people. Bish, btw, gets super hard from the fear and deference GAF users show him because he is a game industry washout and all around loser IRL. Any mod who isn't Bish wants to be him because it's their only hope for ever understanding what respect and pride feel like.
One thread started up that was exclusively about Journalism Ethics and it was cruising along nicely for a few pages but Jason Schreier started posting and was getting ropeadoped by a bunch of the less liberally minded denizens of GAF. They were calling him out on a lot of garbage Kotaku was responsible for, not the Nathan Grayson Zoe Quinn debacle so much, but articles Jason had written over years. Mods shut that one down also. To his credit Schreier as well as a handful of people asked to have the thread reopened. Instead that scrotum sacked shaped human Baesada or whatever his name is opened the Gamergate mega thread and basically admonished the forum like a bunch of children about how they could discuss the issue. It didn't take but a few pages for most people to realize it was another bait thread and if you posted anything even remotely proGG you were getting banned. Some people said whatever the fuck they wanted and took their bans. The thread very quickly became a condensed version of Ghazi where the only acceptable conversation was mocking "gators" and crying tears and offering hugs for the "survivors" of online harassment.
If you look closely at the newer GG related threads you will see some deft users making good points while evading bans. Have to be careful though. It will catch eventually.
What I don't understand about all this was that at one point, not so long ago, Kotaku was a banned site on GAF. You couldn't link to it. Now the admins at GAF are completely supportive of Kotaku, but up until GG nothing at Kotaku had changed. If anything the site had gotten much worse.