[NoboruWataya]

My experience of the internet in the 90s is that it was very homogenous and Western-focused, and I doubt it was much more diverse pre-Eternal September. Also most discussion took place in smaller forums which either focused on a specific topic (and so all members shared at least one common interest) or had a very specific culture.

I think it's revisionism to suggest that the old internet was far more politically and culturally diverse. It is in fact modern social media that has sucked in people of all walks of life and dumped them onto the same platform. An internet of small, open communities sounds more like the internet I grew up with.

[gorbachev]

"My experience of the internet in the 90s is that it was very homogenous and Western-focused"

So was mine, but that was because I was living in a western country.

I bet the experience of people not living in western countries was quite different.

[ekianjo]

> I think it's revisionism to suggest that the old internet was far more politically and culturally diverse

Of course it was more diverse because no-one was kicking anyone off any platform when there was no social media and content policy in application in the first place. I don't even know how you can seriously think that this was not the case.

[Jcowell]

Wasn’t there but I find it hard to believe that webmasters were kicking off people with views they found toxic. That Forms don’t have ban wars. There’s nothing about the internet or social media in regards to “cancel culture” or anything like it. Humanity has been doing it since we formed communities.

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

I've read people cannot actually fathom large numbers, and by extension I have to conclude they also cannot fathom scale or how that changes things.

There's a difference between your neighbor rejecting your belief in green jesus (thrall from World of Warcraft) and the entire world doing it.

That's the difference between your bog standard PHPBB forum from the 90's and FB today. We have _precedence_ for this, people have literally been booted off all major platforms at the same time.

[RGamma]

Depends on the community. Some were very quick to ban you. But there'd ~always be other ones.

[OfSanguineFire]

The early internet had both people interested in Communism in its myriad splinter groups (Marxists.org was one of the first big websites) and people advocating libertarianism in its myriad strands. Compare Mastodon where there was discussion that sites failing to mod out libertarianism might be considered beyond the pale, and ineligible for federation. (I'm not defending libertarian rhetoric, which I find tiresome, but it has been present in internet nerd culture since forever).

The early internet had a huge Buddhist scene (which produced a massive boom in IRL communities). Plus every other "alternative religion" in a Western context, from Hare Krishna to Eckankar. It was where New Atheism started, and at the same time, you could see the occasional figure advocating for American evangelicalism of precisely the sort that most riled New Atheists. People post-internet who know anything about the religions of the world outside the ones in their own area, almost certainly gained that knowledge from the internet.

The rather limited nationalities and races then using the internet did not mean little diversity of views, because you had just enough curious people around that, in aggregate, they could be curious about everything.

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

as if any gathering of people doesn't have their own culture.

Where did this idea come from that people are cardboard cutouts that you can write on to perfection?

Having said that, I don't agree with your second paragraph at all. Individuals would get into shouting matches when they disagreed, but if you think for a second it's more diverse in todays cancel-culture I can only conclude you're not thinking well.

flame wars have been a thing since almost the beginning, and contrary to what you may think, politics and differences were a _major_ driver of that.