Web of Trust never really worked for the general public but there are some circles that really use it, for example kernel.org requires developers to cross sign their key [0], Gentoo uses one authority key to authorize developers.

[0]: https://old.lwn.net/Articles/461236/

Current changes in GnuPG just reflect the status-quo: for majority of keys only self-signatures are important (and imported). For limited circles where OpenPGP matters third-party signatures still work if keys are fetched using Web Key Directory protocol (kernel.org [1], Gentoo, Debian already do that).

[1]: https://www.kernel.org/category/signatures.html#using-the-web-key-directory