When I was a kid, around the early internet era I'm assuming everyone had similar experiences of the social internet. Specifically forums, built around a particular topic, or just literally chat forums where you'd create an account and interact with the same people regularly. (Bonus points if you could create a cool looking "sig") those people were always popular.
Facebook obviously killed forums off, but I'm spending a lot more time on the same forums, and interacting with the same people over and over again. Which I've come to the conclusion is actually a fairly good defense against Bots as you have a general idea of someone's normal behaviour.
Heck even Facebook, what originally killed off forums, just doesn't seem to have much use anymore. Most posting is in groups, which are essentially just forums.
Are we finally seeing the overdue devolution of the internet back into specific communities? This is great IMO by the way as places like X will always be common areas but places like this are great refuges. As long as intro threads don't make a comeback. Those things were always terrible.
How much time do people spend on single interest forums these days?
I'm pretty much exclusively on forums and always have been I do think you're right with your points. Bots are definitely a factor I bet loads of people are fed up with the total inaction of social media sites when it comes to dealing with them. Groups give you a hell of a lot more control over who you let in and so on.
This is something I had an epiphany with RL and I've been trying to make this point to boomers I know who keep getting 90% scam calls on their phone lines. I have not bought a phone line, it used to be necessary for an internet connection back in the day as anyone over 30 will remember but nowadays it's totally unnecessary. I have a love/hate relationship with mobile phones but the fact that you can have a contacts list on them and you know when you get a phone call you can check it's somebody that matters is pretty nice.
I brought up phones, because I think the internet is the same way, it's all about how you use it. The only issue with communities and groups of course is tranny mods and mods in general having a power trip. I've ranted in the past how I had people who used to be quite good friends for awhile turn into massive weirdos over nothing. Even the people that knew them longer than me met round the back and basically confirmed yeah they just stopped being fun to hang out with.
Every method has it's negatives, I know the older generations especially shit on young people over not being able to form 'real social relationships' but at the same time how the fuck else are you supposed to meet people with the same interests? I think the biggest issue for younger people is often social mobility. Which is getting a hell of a lot more difficult these days. If you're surrounded by leftists and normies like I am you can't exactly go out and shoot the shit with people at random because not only do I have very little in common with them they'll get triggered over the most minor things I say.
I do like alt-tech, that's one thing I will point out, it feels much like old school internet where it's a gathering of nerds and autists which explains why despite everything I can shitpost here along with everybody else. These are corners of the internet that aren't necessarily private, just like 4chan they're too autistic for the average normie to even conceive and leftists immediately get frightened away after about 5 seconds because of 'mean trolls'.