[heavyset_go]

> I think the driving force between the Internet seeming so small nowadays is a combination of changes to how search engines work, as well a move from forums to big social media which has meant a shift from organic community discovery to being drip-fed content from based on what an algorithm thinks will be engaging.

I think you hit the nail on the head. Google used to prioritize forum posts in their search results. They even had a feature to limit search results to only forum posts via a "Discussions" option on the results page.

These days, Google prioritizes social media content, click bait and blogspam that has a lot of ads. The "Discussions" option is gone, and even recent forum posts are nowhere to be found on the first few pages of search results.

[tdeck]

A similar thing has happened with Google News. It used to be that News was a search engine that basically told you all the latest blog posts and discussions on a topic, rather than trying to provide capital-N News. I was recently looking for that functionality to find discussions on an obscure topic and it's completely gone.