I'm not convinced a MOOC is necessarily worse than a pure large lecture class if the material is amenable to auto-graded problem sets. (Leaving aside a regular class would typically have TAs and other students you could get help from.)

But they sure didn't live up to the hype. They didn't democratize education in any meaningful way. And I'm not sure even the people with undergrad and grad degrees who made up the majority of MOOC students use them much these days. I know, for me, they were mostly a novelty for a while. Maybe if I want to dip into a topic I'll watch some online video but I haven't even signed up for a MOOC for years at this point.