I think it depends on what the situation and format is. When I was writing research notes and a few books, I found bottom of the page footnotes really useful as, not only references, but also as parentheticals and other purposes that some readers might find useful or interesting but didn’t really justify breaking the flow of the text.

Pretty sure footnotes disrupt the flow of reading. The improvement of the "flow of the text" is an illusion which would only exist if the text wasn't sprinkled with footnotes.