For niche areas forums are still doing alright. More general purpose forums sort of melted away and moved to Facebook and the like. Forums require a lot modera

For niche areas forums are still doing alright. More general purpose forums sort of melted away and moved to Facebook and the like. Forums require a lot moderation and maintenance. If you don't keep the software up to date they're easy pickings for hackers. Without active moderation they're quickly overrun with spam. For most people forums end up expensive pains in the ass. In terms of ActivityPub, the lasting conversation topic-centric nature of old school forums doesn't really fit in the model of pushing new activity. A hot-topic Reddit clone fits that model much better.