I agree OP.
I rear face and plan on maxing out my DS' 25kg seat. When I first came across the car safety groups I really bought into it all. I still do believe it's safer and would also rear face future children but the groups themselves are just awful.
There's one admin particular who I actually wonder what's happened to as I feel I've watched a descent into a complete personality change over a couple of years. She started off polite and informative and really interested in educating people. I only rarely saw her be quite firm and that was when eg someone was refusing all suggestions because they wanted one with prettier patterns and she pointed out that safety was more important.
Then over the years something changed and she became more and more aggressive. It's not just aimed at the people arguing with her - people really politely asking for advice or questions get jumped on, sarcastic comments and really aggressively spoken to especially if they don't know something that's common knowledge on there. A lot of people seem quite frightened by her and I feel bad because part of the reason people buy from the admin businesses is to get the aftercare support and advice from that group but it's no longer a welcoming place.
One of the main things that bothers me is the reply people get when their children have managed to open the buckle of their car seat. At one point I remember admins would suggest eg Velcro on the button or a certain belt buckle clip that was safety tested.
However now I always see one admin in particular respond to these posts saying that they need to parent and teach their child to behave, shouting really loudly if needed to so they know it's serious. Which might sound fine until I mention that they're often asking about very young toddlers eg early 2s or even in one case 18 months old!!!! She told the parent of the 18 month old that it was her job to teach her child not to do it and to discipline the child. When the mum questioned this (probably assuming she'd misread the age as 18m is not far off a baby) the admin was really unkind eg "what would you do if she was about to run into a road? Or reached out to burn their hand?"
Umm... well not scream at them to be honest? I'd be more concerned with physically grabbing them to keep them safe which you can't do in a car seat and is why ideally a solution would involve stopping them escaping at all.
I'm just amazed that its a group where forward facing a child is basically murdering them and they're so serious about getting exactly the right fit and making sure the right clothes are worn etc. Yet they think it's ok to leave the safety of a 1 year old dependent on how well they remember being screamed at my their mum.Even if you manage to "scare" them, they do not have good impulse control at that age and I cannot comprehend how you can leave life or death up to how well your one year old behaves and does what you tell them to.
I even saw someone whose child was a bit older but had autism and didn't understand the consequences of opening the buckle. The admin got in an argument with this person basically saying that lots of autistic people can learn not to undo the buckle and that it was offensive to autistic people to say that. The poster clarified that she wasn't saying all autistic people can't understand consequences but specifically her child. She got jumped on by the car seat cult and basically told it was a parenting issue.
Honestly seeing such a lack of understanding of child development has put me off massively and actually made me trust the whole thing a lot less. Also, a lot of non-car seat topics posted seem quite "woo" and it does have the same cultish vibe as the BLW groups.
I initially saw it as really scientific and evidence based but often when someone asks for evidence they post eg a YouTube video of someone saying it's safer (I can post a YouTube video of me saying I have a pet dinosaur but I don't think the museum of natural history are going to see it and give me a visit). Or they post a video from one of the manufacturers of the seat. Or a random flyer with no source for the information.
I've spent so many hours researching and I do actually still think it's likely significantly safer to rear face but I also think perhaps it's not the end of the world kind of thing I once thought.
The safe vs unsafe thing bothers me too. They act as if one thing is safe and one thing is unsafe and that's it. Safe is obviously a spectrum. Sitting the baby on the roof and driving down the motorway is extremely unsafe. Never putting your child in a car is the most safe. We take risks all the time. We just minimise them as we can.
I find it so annoying that they act like rear facing a 3 year 10 month old child is the same risk as putting a 9 month old straight from an infant carrier to a front facing seat. We all put our line of acceptable risk somewhere. I actually think it's fair enough if they want to decline giving advice about front facing before a certain age but I do wish they'd refer to things being safER than other things instead of safe vs unsafe.