[aww_dang]

The drink coaster distributor was popular without a doubt. They never factored into my use of the Internet. Without fact-check, there's a mild equivalence at best. It is hard not to encounter platforms and their agendas in some form today.

The free hosting providers were not engaging in political censorship. Google had a maxim, "Don't be evil". They didn't have infoboxes explaining, "Experts agree that enhanced interrogation is not torture".

[tw04]

I'm not even sure how to respond other than to point out AOL is literally where the term walled garden in reference to the internet came from. They were WORSE than what is around today by an order of magnitude.

[aww_dang]

I never used them and don't know of the political parallels. I know they had more biz relationships for search results as an example.

Maybe start by explaining how they were worse?

[tw04]

Early AOL didn't give you access to the broader internet, you got access to the content they allowed you access to. That was far, far worse than today when individual platforms choose not to host certain content whether by force or choice. Your ISP isn't curating a tiny subset of the internet for you.