Alt.tv.x-files was wonderful on Usenet. When the new eps aired, people would post at every commercial break, commenting on the previous segment, in nearly real time. Show creator Chris Carter said in interviews that they read fan feedback and analysis of episodes from the group. It was a great Fandom vibe.
...and before that, watching postage sized video clips from Woodtock 2 as it was happening, through a dial up Prodigy account, and accruing a huge long distance phone bill doing it.
If you've been on the Internet a long time, good analogies seem to be like email servers or (back in the day) Usenet servers. There can be lots of servers, and you get an account on one, but then you can post and read between all the servers. Like being on gmail but emailing people and reading emails from their accounts at other places. Or back in the day, like being on your ISP or university's Usenet server, but reading posts from other servers and posting things people on other servers can read.
It's a terrible handicap for the writers. Not enough to easily do character development. Cramming too much action into episodes. Horrible choice. It was especially bad in Picard.