Yes, I have had that feeling. It's like walking into a nuclear bomb strike site long after the radiation has dissipated enough, but the crater is still obviously visible and dead.
For me, it was not on the "old web". It was on an older established social media site. I used to be part of a group called "Artsy Maximalist Hippie Antique Bohemian Retro Colorful Home Design" (or something along those lines with a lot of words). It was my favorite group because it was entirely just people posting home design inspiration over a large swathe of aesthetics. I was on this group for probably 8 or 9 years total, and it blew up and filled with members.
With more members came more group rule violations. So they got more moderators. All was going well. But keep in mind, the group was started and owned by ONE person. It was also implied it was a group for adults/apartment residents/homeowners to share various decor photos and ideas, or their own decor.
A person who worked in a particular kind of store where children are not allowed joined the group. (I'm gonna leave it at that because it's MelonLand.) They started posting images of their product displays (full maximalist scenes complete with googly eyes and other silly things made of pipe cleaners and glitter). They were really funny, and technically did not violate the group rules, and the owner of the group and the mods found them hilarious as did many members.
But some members did not find it funny. It resulted in many upset reports being made to mods for posts that had already been mod-approved. So after so many announcement posts trying to get people to stop reporting that one user's posts, the owner changed the group name to "Artsy Maximalist Hippie Antique Bohemian Retro Colorful Home Design and sometimes ******* (18+ ONLY)". Lots of people made "I'M LEABING" posts, and others quietly left, and then the group was good for a while longer. Things tempered out.
Fast forward to two years later. The group's content had stopped appearing on my feed thanks to the ever changing algorithm and me not seeking it out. But I had just gotten my new apartment, and I wanted some home decor inspiration! I go to the group from my profile... And I don't see it. In its place, I see a group I never joined that is called "Fun's over, it's just pictures of my cat Tobias now." The profile picture is of a cute Tuxedo cat.
I go the group page and almost everything is gone. All the old posts, everything. Nuked.

And of course, I haven't looked at this group for like two whole years so I'm wondering "What in the world...?" And hoping the group didn't get hacked or something. I scroll through just dozens and dozens of pictures of this tuxedo cat. I search through for comments. Eventually I find the remnants in old posts of people who got deleted from the group. Pretty much, the group had another influx of newcomers, became unmanageable, got strikes from the social media site itself over false reports from people who kept reporting that one user's posts despite the title of the group... So the owner got fed up and said "this isn't fun for me anymore, I never expected this to get so big" and then they nuked EVERYTHING out of spite and told everyone to get out if they don't like it, or they can stay for pictures of the group owner's cat.

My guess is that the people who stayed had probably been original members or just didn't know what happened. For perspective, the group grew to like over 60,000 members, and when I last looked at it post-nuking it was down to like under 500 members. No group members were allowed to post anymore. The owner had locked down the group so it was entirely private, no new users could join, and only they could post. If you commented about the old group, you got evicted.
It felt so unfortunate to me that the incoming group members did not respect the space the owner had cultivated, and instead of reporting privately to mods, they used the official report system through the social media site which would then bounce those posts to the owner and not the mods. Or they could've just left and found a different space. That group space had turned into a massive library of home decor tips and tricks and photographs of all these different beautiful design aesthetics under that maximalist umbrella. Many members posted photos of their own home designs that were never cross-posted and were lost to the public in the nuking. It was like the burning of the Library of Alexandria of Maximalism and other Subculture Aesthetics.