Isn't this antithesis to the issue at hand?

These niche places are great exactly because they're hard to find, and the community there grows organically.

I'm on HN now because slashdot was flailing years ago, and a friend I knew IRL mentioned it ....

I frequent a truck forum that hasn’t changed in years. I’d imagine there are other forums that exist for your special interests. I tend to meet a lot of nice and helpful people there.

I probably spend less than five minutes a day on traditional social media which feels toxic in comparison.

I am into motorcycles and so there are plenty of forums for that. In the Bay Area we have 2 active forums. A problem is that Facebook has eroded it a bit. I also mountain bike and there are also forums for that. One of my favorites is a garage forum for people who deck out their garages. Cool to see concepts people come up with for garage workshops. All those sites seem supported through ads related to the specific topic.

My friends host a RocketChat instance with maybe 20 or 30 active users. It's invite-only though, so I can't really recommend it in particular online. But these places exist, and you could consider spawning one and growing it to your preferred size. Our "treehouse" has been pretty great for hanging out and reminds me of the days when IRC was more of a thing.

Ravelry is a lovely social network for knitters, crotchers, and spinners.

It's a relatively small site, but it's a model for how social networks should work. Because it's built around a shared interest that people spend money on, the site can sell ad slots instead of relying on real-time bidding based ad networks.

HA! - I don't think you intended to make this joke but if you did, Kudos!

If we give the HN hug to enough niche sites, maybe they'll pick up their SEO game, improve the ranking and start optimizing for the big ad dollars :)

What are you interested in? Find a niche community around that.