Not really. The fact alone that anyone could create their own web forum is already leaps and bounds ahead of what Usenet users could ever do.
Those interested in setting up their web forum had to endure the technical and financial hurdles of getting it and running just to sidestep the artificial and byzantine barriers to entry required by Usenet's self-described guardians.
Afterwards, services like Reddit and the like further simplified the process of creating a web forum, and thus virtually the whole world jumped onboard.
> "(...) although you could get a PHPBB hosting account pretty easily you would then have to drive traffic to your site*
There is nothing simple about setting up a full blown web server. Let's not fool ourselves.
This is something that some software engineers never done nor have experience in what is required to get it up and running from start to finish. This is certainly not something at the reach of any person with a hobby or even personal interest.
But you didn’t have to. Shared web hosting sites had scripts to do all that for you more than 20 years ago.
I don't buy it. The web forums that largely replaced Usenet also had significant barriers to entry; although you could get a PHPBB hosting account pretty easily you would then have to drive traffic to your site; people couldn't just add your site to their feedlist and see new posts automatically without "going there". And you had a much freer hand with moderation.
I think web forums won largely because they didn't require any client software - the barriers to entry for new users were non-existent. Maybe the moderation was more effective as well; I know some usenet groups had major issues with spam but that wasn't universal.