It's very difficult these days in the EU. With all the regulations around age verification, the requirement to work with police, having a privacy and cookie policy, a moderation policy, all that crap that the politicians force not just on the big ones that need it but also the little forum run by the one kid in his bedroom.

Some countries like Germany also require legal contact information (an Impressum). Technically it even applies to sites outside Germany that Germans can visit, though they don't really have a way of enforcing that. So basically if you have a website you're required to doxx yourself. The old web is not just being destroyed by big tech but by the politicians as well.

It's kinda time for a semi-darknet free from all the legislation. Tor is a bit too dark for it but it would be good to have some kind of anonimised hobby net that can escape all this red tape. Basically the free for all that the internet used to be in the late 90s.

Discord took this place.

I run one. It's pretty good. I don't run any adverts, which confers the advantage that Google doesn't really list it anywhere because they can't make money off the users.

It's pretty easy to do these days. I won't drop a link to it unless anyone really wants to discuss old Range Rovers, but it runs forum software called FlaskBB which is worth a play.