I find this perspective bizarre. Though I'm not happy about it all being centralized, the closest thing we have these days to the very niche phpBB forums of the 2000s is various subreddits focused on very specific topics. Scrolling through the front page is slop, sure, but whenever I'm looking for perspectives on a niche topic, searching for "<topic> reddit" is the first thing I do. And I know many people without any connection to the software industry who feel the same way.