Depending on your limits and definition, it still is. I have an account on sdf.org and once in a while I run tin to see what people are posting about the Raspbe

Depending on your limits and definition, it still is. I have an account on sdf.org and once in a while I run tin to see what people are posting about the Raspberry Pi. But the reason it isn't very popular, I suspect, is because it is 99% spam. Only the occasional post is actually content. And most of the newsgroups that were popular once are only spam now. You can tell it's been going on a long time because there is reams and reams of it, with nobody even bothering to reply - literally spamming the void. It's really a disaster. Back in the 90's people saw that coming. It's definitely here. In the early 90's I used to provide UUCP news and email to BBS systems. If NNTP content was as crappy then as it is today, I would never have bothered.