I tend to agree with you. I too have spent time doing amateur digital and film. I started shooting on 110mm cameras when I was < 10, and those photos were bad!. By 13 I'd graduated to a low-end SLR and learned to use it properly. I shot on that all through high school and college. I was recently looking at some of my old photos, and I'm very pleased to have good photos from those youthful years, whereas my friends only have the crummy photos the author describes. I've gotten back into film, developing it at home, and having fun pushing the limits of the medium. It's a true pleasure.

Film can take _great_ photos! But my takeaway from the article was that before the ubiquity of smart phones with great cameras packed full of auto-adjusting technology, the number of people able to take advantage of film was low. That is, the signal to noise ratio was low, whereas now it is high. Most people back then used disposable cameras, or fixed focus point-and-shoot ~ and they couldn't be bothered to invest in an SLR and learn the basics of photography (exposure, etc...). As a result, lots and lots of truly awful photos were taken.

Edit: I noticed that the articles title "Photos are too flattering now" is not as same as the <title> tag, which is "The Internet Killed Bad Photos". I think that photos are not too/excesively flattering, and I think it was improved cameras that killed bad photos, not the internet. A better title would be "The ubiquity of high-quality entry-level cameras has dramatically improved photo quality amongst the general population." ~ a far less sexy title.