The alternative is going back to Usenet, which considering the current state of affairs, is impossible. Real threading is possible to an extent with nested com

The alternative is going back to Usenet, which considering the current state of affairs, is impossible. Real threading is possible to an extent with nested comments (hidden until expanded). There are some software that already offer this. State is also available in some versions. Discourse does this to an extent and I think Vanilla has a plugin for it. Killfiles alternative would be an ignore list for users and subscribe feature for specific tags which some forums already offer. I'm not sure if NNTP is up to the task, but a similar massively distributed system with persistent storage would likely be a solution. There's also the aspect of familiarity. There are better ways to handle discussion, but these would be jarring for someone accustomed to the "worse" way of doing things for the past decade or so. I also think forums would greatly benefit from having fewer features that are absolutely necessary.