I saw this thread popping out of its seams yesterday but figured Ill wait until today to read through all of it.
In regards to the latest points made I think the following:
Some people have 9-5 jobs. They sit in front of a computer. They cant drive Uber or start a new company at work. They do however have a screen they sit in front of and some time on their hands. They can use DDF to learn how to program, plan the next vacation, read up on good deals going on to save themselves the occasional buck. They can also learn about Credit Cards and the perks of them and have a vast pool of experienced and helpful people willing to help with anything from points utilization to credit history etc.
I know people that got themselves CCs and ended up in debt bc they didn't really know what they were doing. Were they being naive? Yes of course. But I just look at a place like DDF and to me people active here or asking good questions here this woudl not happen too bc this is a helpful community where you would have learned about all of this. So there is certainly a lot of good to be gained from DDF.
I also think that one needs to be honest to oneself and reflect on ones individual agenda and the guidelines one puts in place for oneself. Everyone has their own moral standard. You should be aware of what that is and try to stick to it. Not everybody here necessarily follows halacha but I just think that if you start feeling like you are doing something wrong, take a step back, analyze what is going wrong and see if you feel like you are deviating from your standards.
As mentioned above, I think that DDF is valuable for many other reasons as well. You can learn a lot about many different things here and have interesting conversations with people from all over the world. That is valuable to some.
