this is an interesting question i’ve had banging around in my mind since well before Reddit’s implosion (and Discord’s enshittification), but which seems really worth asking now.
you can’t blame Reddit and Discord or their imitators entirely for these going out of style, but they’ve sure put the dagger in a lot of remaining ones, and i kind of wonder if they’re just in an irreversible and terminal decline a la USENET. i can only name two or three i even consider checking anymore, and i’m not sure how sustainable any of those are long-term.
Absolutely. They’re great for when you don’t need to federate and just need a place to chat and share with a given community or set of friends.
I hope more come back. I’ve recently joined https://ukretro.online/forum/ and while it’s slow going I hope it gathers up a little community there.
Forums can be great, fairly easy to manage, spaces for people to gather in a way that they control and own. Even out here in fedi we don’t (most of us) control or own the servers we’re using and running mastodon etc… isn’t especially cheap. PHPbb needs chuff all server to run so it very very affordable to run as a personal thing.