I went and tried Minds and MeWe, and nothing compares to here. Maybe one day there will be something better. For now though this place combined with GINAbot make it easy for me to find the content I want to read and the people I want to interact with very easy.
The flagging system is definitely not perfect, but I prefer it over the disgusting things Google+, Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms have been doing at least. At least here I am not talking to myself when I post. Google was suppressing all of my liberty related content.
My friends there were just talking to ourselves even though the posts were public.
Heck, I cannot even talk freely on Facebook, or I risk jail or ban. It is easy for people like us to be banned there. I despise the place and look forward to it going the way of Myspace.
The reputation system does bother me a little, but I don't mind my slow growing reputation. All it really affects for me is being put lower down the list of replies, and I'll self vote to get past the bots and scammers as necessary.
Apparently the whales here have no interest in my expertise, but a few people like @hilarski, @canadian-coconut, and @grow-pro have helped me a ton to get started and grow.
Like I believe Hilarski said, this place is a bit of a popularity contest. If you're not popular with the "in crowd," your reputation won't shoot up real quickly without some serious bot abuse. :)