Why do you think forums died? It wasn't because everyone serendipitously decided to switch to a dramatically worse system.
When Twitter went crazy, there was a clear migration path 'Just use Mastodon'[1]. With Reddit shut down, there's no clear alternative for communities to migrate to.
You say forums are clearly superior? Are you volunteering to operate r/seattle (or whatever community you/I care about), and its 100-500,000 users as a phpbb board? I sure as hell ain't...
[1] I mean, there are problems with that migration path, but they are significantly smaller than migrating a large subreddit to a forum. Reddit, both pre- or post-enshittification is still the path of least resistance for running a community, which is why people who put in the time to run communities use it, over self-hosting. It wasn't 'dramatically worse' for the people that mattered.
When Twitter went crazy, there was a clear migration path 'Just use Mastodon'[1]. With Reddit shut down, there's no clear alternative for communities to migrate to.
You say forums are clearly superior? Are you volunteering to operate r/seattle (or whatever community you/I care about), and its 100-500,000 users as a phpbb board? I sure as hell ain't...
[1] I mean, there are problems with that migration path, but they are significantly smaller than migrating a large subreddit to a forum. Reddit, both pre- or post-enshittification is still the path of least resistance for running a community, which is why people who put in the time to run communities use it, over self-hosting. It wasn't 'dramatically worse' for the people that mattered.