Agreed. I think one of the big problems with current social media is that they are person-focused instead of topic-focused. This is backwards. This means if I want to follow a cool woodworker because I like their woodworking, I also see their other hobbies, or their political trash, or whatever. Topic-based forums are much better suited for what I actually want--discussions around woodworking. Forums are also self-limiting in size. If a single thread gets too active for people to follow, it makes sense to split off into separate threads, which keeps community sizes reasonable.

I've been a member of one of the internet's longer-running web forums for two decades, and nothing I've seen from the big social media corps comes close to providing the same level of usability and community health.

Even better, Usenet, which is what the web-based forums were a poor replacement for.

I've used both Usenet and web-based forums side by side in the 90s–2000s and I thought they were both perfectly adequate.

Yeah, every single forum I ever regularly posted on is long gone. Some moved to Facebook, which, well, I ain't using that shit. Sad times :\

Even forums eventually die out.