[Delphiza]

Yes, what we remember is interesting, especially while reflecting on posts such as OPs. The Internet that I grew up with didn't have bots, neighbourhood gossipers, weaponised propaganda... we spurned people trying to sell stuff. My teenage Internet predated widespread use of email, so predated spam. Maybe my rose-coloured glasses remember a smaller number of real people and a demographic that was closer to my own.

[JKCalhoun]

No, you've hit on the issue. The shit that is the internet now didn't come about solely due to scale—or even from the newbies migrating in via AOL. It came about because bad-intentioned and greed-driven actors moved in to make money, or to push their propaganda.

[chasd00]

> The Internet that I grew up with didn't have bots

to be fair, I found eggdrop on almost every single corporate Linux server in all my clients in those days.

[someonebaggy]

eggdrop responds to explicit commands, yeah? Very different from the ones that infest the modern internet.

[chasd00]

yes, fair point. hah i was a jr admin at the time. i remember removing eggdrop and closing the holes (or so i thought) only to see it back within a few days. i put a txt file in the directory saying something like "look, you can have eggdrop here just don't mess up the server". I really didn't want to ignite the ire of a hacker way more competent at Linux than me.

[smackeyacky]

I think it’s the demographic that has changed most markedly but even then discourse still rhymed with today’s dumpster fire. Sure, that monoculture of geeks had a veneer of community but that’s all it was.

Spam and bots showed up early enough I remember having to deal with garbage in email and Usenet. Even if it started with harmless crap like sending Marty Shergold style email forwards and whatnot. It was no paradise although admittedly it seemed to degrade fast from the early nineties.