i started using the internet in the late 2000’s and still remember when you search for something most of the times it would return with a forum post … now its just random websites … if you ever need real and concise answer you have to add site:reddit.com at every search and since discord or twitter are not crawlable by these search crawlers they are not mentioned . Where did all those forums went…are there still active forums ?
Just to give another perspective, the German part of the internet is still full of extremely niche bulletin board-style forums for every hobby/technology imaginable. Many have millions of posts and have been online for 20+ years. Seems to me like it’s mostly the English-speaking web that’s been affected by these large content aggregators and closed platforms like Discord.