"Seems strange to me that SE23 closing and EDforum rumored to be finishing whats the common problem, Personally sad to see local websites closing always helped big time. Will be missed."

I used to visit ED forum a little, and this one a lot, sydenham.org.uk still a little, se23.life over my dead body, but I pretty much just gave up on all the local forums after the toxicity from .life.
It poisoned how I felt about the whole postal area. These things are easily done.

If .life flooded ED forum too with fake accounts and venom, then I can well imagine it never recovered either. It is not snowflakery, but people just have better things to do with their time than take this on. Or clean up the mess, I guess.

As for se23.life, maybe the main backers finally realised it was doing more harm than good for the area. Or maybe the project could only work if done at scale and perhaps people from other areas were more selective of who they 'got into bed with'.