I'm guessing after all these big platforms failing we'll likely not see a unification of the communities for a long time as people are wary of it. Definitely seems like things are splintering back to how they were in the days of message boards
Depends on the details of the splintering, for me. The Fediverse seems like a good way to splinter - everything's free and open, but there are shared protocols that allow for interoperability and discoverability.
Yeah, same. This is why I like Lemmy quite a bit. It's splintered in a way, but you can still access other communities in a consistent fashion. Kind of like message boards but instead of 6 types of forum software there's one UX/UI
And one place to check for new posts. I had to use an RSS reader to keep up back in those days, and password managers weren't as big of a thing so I had terrible security hygiene.
The fall of Rome lead to the middle ages. That meant a fracturing of the former Roman empire, then various factions trying to recreate the former Roman empire or at least the western portion of it. Seems like some are just dropping off Reddit and moving to other smaller forums and link aggregation sites; some even mentioned visiting Slashdot and Fark. Like I said, some new sites may come along and we'll have a renaissance.