[G3rn0ti]

> The internet functioned fine for over a decade, profitably, without invasive adware like we see now

What time period are you even talking about?

In the mid nineties the Internet was largely a research network between university computers and paid for by tax payers. The internet only started growing exponentially with commercial services appearing in the late nineties. This was the time when people started to demand high speed Internet connections (ASDL) and were willing to pay for that. But this was not the case for its services. Google's primary business model way back in 2000 was already showing ads related to your search terms. Even back in 2003 Google introduced the free GMAIL service that showed ads based on your email content. That's 21 years ago.

IMHO it is your view on the Internet history that is being "revisionist" and "gaslighting". Take this from sb who had his private Internet access as early as 1998.

[jmwilson]

> In the mid nineties the Internet was largely a research network between university computers and paid for by tax payers.

Your timeline is off by at least half a decade, and things were changing very rapidly in that time. By the mid-'90s, NSFNET was formally dead, after years of accepting commercial traffic. Local ISPs for home users started popping up and AOL opened its access to USENET in 1993.

The push for residential broadband also started almost immediately; @Home was offering residential cable internet in 1996, it was the future at the time, just not very evenly distributed. This was well before PCs had the processing power to do standard-definition video.

[G3rn0ti]

> By the mid-'90s, NSFNET was formally dead, after years of accepting commercial traffic.

Mind you: Your statement says nothing about profitability. Until 1995 the NSFNET was the most important backbone of the American internet and it was paid for by the US government. Of course, other countries lagged way behind the US' development where the Internet still remained primarily a research network until the late nineties.

The German Telekom e.g. was still pitching its BTX service in 1995 (kinda like teletext for modems) that could be used for shopping, online banking and stuff -- stuff which you could not really do on the WWW yet. I remember my first experiments in browsing the WWW happend over a BTX gateway and it was awfully slow even by the standards back then. The first DSL service only started in 1999/2000 in Germany in the form of a test program where you were required to answer market research question to get a cheap, subsidized service.

(I mean we are talking about the _World Wide_ Web, here, not the _American_ Web.)

Furthermore, your argument also says _nothing_ about how commercial Internet services where financing themselves back then which was the original topic of this thread. GeoCities, Yahoo, AltaVista, Google -- all those sites featured adds back in the 90s. If I remember correctly, Netscape Navigator also featured a "what's cool" button that -- I believe -- brought you to sites that payed for being advertised that way. So even back in the Internet's infancy it was largely commercialized using advertisements. This has never changed. And this was my original point.

I am not saying I am big fan of ads. But this is largely a problem of news agencies that work around a clock to bring you news (or rumors) and are currently unable to finance their services by subscriptions alone. This is the sector where ad spam is most visible. Despite all that the Internet has become a tremendously important part of our lives bringing real value: We get the news from there, we go shopping there, we watch live broadcasts there, watch movies, stay in contact with our friends, hold meetings, apply for jobs or housing and even work in there. The Internet was a toy in the 90s. These days it is central to our social lives. Saying the Internet is "broken" today and we have "skrewed it up" just because of its advertisement sector is a bit naive ...

[JohnMakin]

I didn’t want to even get into this but yea as a 9 year old trying to set up IRC on an AOL connection by like 1996, this reeked of BS. I am only trusting my own hazy recollection here though, so thanks for validating it. Sometimes I feel like I am crazy describing how things used to be.

[JohnMakin]

> Google's primary business model way back in 2000 was already showing ads related to your search terms. Even back in 2003 Google introduced the free GMAIL service that showed ads based on your email content. That's 21 years ago.

The adtech of today is nowhere near as invasive or pervasive as it was then - this is an extremely dishonest or ignorant framing of what is happening in today's internet vs the one of yesterday.

There are plenty examples of paid-for subscription services on the internet doing profitably without jamming adware/malware down your throat. Would you like examples?