This is great news! 
Iāve enjoyed the nature of the forum. It reminds me of when I was a kid. I donāt really enjoy a lot of social media but being young I feel like Iām very familiar with them and have some ideas.
I really do think a discord server is the best option. Theyāre totally free, user friendly to set up and run, and is very accessible for most people. Almost everyone I know has a discord. It is the way I play dnd, communicate about Minecraft servers, and keep in touch with groups of friends. Itās the perfect mix of forums and instant messenger. You can have different categories with channels for specific topics. Itās one of the most common ways for fans to congregate now a days. Facebook groups are still popular to some degree but so many people use discord as a text/messaging app that it is often quite active because itās convenient and user friendly.
Iām an older zoomer. I was around to see Afi and emo stuff be popular. But there is a large influx of teenagers who are latching onto bands of the 2000s and 2010s associated with alt scenes. Zoomers donāt use Facebook. They use TikTok, twitter, and discord. The first two donāt facilitate groups/fandoms (twitter is crashing and burning at the moment). But discord is something that is wildly popular and would definitely make it easier for younger people to find. I stumbled upon this by accident because I saw a despair faction shirt for sale on mercari and googled what it was and why it was associated with Afi.
My biggest problem with Discord is, and always has been, that you can be shut down at a momentās notice for reasons outside of your control. Free options arenāt always the best.
Despair Faction forums were an important part of my life, an important part of AFIās storied history, and are here to stay.