The internet was a better place when it didn't have all those people that require moderation.
i think size is actually the problem. smaller moderated communities are way better than facebook or unmoderated shitholes
I think we only feel and think this way because that wss prior to a wider and more gradual Eternal September. I don't think we can go back at this point.
I'd actually attribute that to the technical inaccessibility of the internet meaning that, while not everyone on the internet at that point was smart, they were almost all curious about new things. The user base of the early internet was basically self-selected to be quite full of skeptics.
Yup, you can see this effect all the way to the 2010s, before which "Internet kid" was practically a subculture (or group of subcultures). Once everybody arrived on Facebook, the Internet became an almost-universal social phenomenon. This is cool in its own way, but it also means that "internet people" converges rapidly to "people".