So I've been thinking about this since 2012 as a non-coder, and @julian might remember about 3 years ago I was musing over Time Berners Lee Solid Pods concept I think based in Node.js and is now offered as https://www.inrupt.com, at the tine I found this interesting and seemed to encapsulate what i was looking for, but no one was really understanding the concept fully or why I was looking at this, but here we are now and Mastodon seems to have lit that fire under many asses at once.
I came across the activitypub recently too and it seemed to be similar kinda, but I'm not sure yet as have not fully dug into it.
My originating ideas probably better classed as user <> www <> server(s)
My main concept was a user retains all their original data in their possession, and being able to publish and control from one point, publish that info across multiple platforms all at once, and retain control over edits, removals etc., every platform could require individual negation which the user coudl manage again the permission etc. from their console app/platform (this would include a monetisation system) - is this what ActivityPub allows?
Since all those years ago, there are some offering or tapping into this original thought space. My thinking was market need (user need and traditional journalism to some degree) as publishing industry hadn't really cracked the net back in 2012 IMHO and was floundering, how to monetise content etc., well I thought, take out the publishing houses for good (middle men) and put it all in the lap of the content creator.
Eventually after the era of social media wildfire, services like substack.com and maybe tips in brave began to inhabit a similar or the same space of that original thought space. The thing that has always struck me NodeBB, it has the capacity to also be the platform for such user use cases too.
There is a focus obviously on managing more than one user, a group discussion, the original forum concept, but I would propose inverting the outlook and running a parallel track and thinking about NodeBB for the single user case applications.
As for make starting forums suck less, well some of that is considered above, but needs clear conceptual again another thing on my mind for many years, but oh boy, I'lm gonna stop right here for now.