The question was "What's the equivalent to it nowadays?"... unless there's something else that I'm missing, I think google groups is where such discussions take

The question was "What's the equivalent to it nowadays?"... unless there's something else that I'm missing, I think google groups is where such discussions take place and that's where I've participated in for the last decade or so. I don't think newsgroups are only used for piracy. Most open source products have a Google Group associated with it unless they're using the discussion on Github or Stackoverflow chat / IRC.