One thing that's happening currently that has been alluded to by other people in the comments is the rapid disappearance of forums.
Instead of finding a forum dedicated to something you're interested in and getting access to a ton of structured, easily searchable information that has built up over time, things have moved to discord.
Discord's primary advantage is real-time communication, which comes at the cost of structured, long-term, and (generally) on topic knowledge. This is not a good trade off, imo. Discord is also a social media platform, which in itself comes with issues common with modern platforms.
I’m curious what the general demographic preference is regarding real-time/chat vs. async/longer-form. I never much liked real-time/chat, even back in the times of IRC, BSD talk, and ICQ, and have always preferred mailing lists/Usenet/forums.
Instead of finding a forum dedicated to something you're interested in and getting access to a ton of structured, easily searchable information that has built up over time, things have moved to discord.
Discord's primary advantage is real-time communication, which comes at the cost of structured, long-term, and (generally) on topic knowledge. This is not a good trade off, imo. Discord is also a social media platform, which in itself comes with issues common with modern platforms.