If I were to pick an inflection point, a point at which the internet started going to shit, i'd say it was around 07/08 with the birth of the iPhone and Appstore. That's when "pay to publish" really started to take off.
That's very plausible.
I additionally want to add that before the iPhone, having a locked-down device where the vendor decides which app(lication)s you are allowed to install caused huge outcries and shitstorms.
Example: Microsoft's initiatives for "Next-Generation Secure Computing Base" (formerly Palladium) [1] and attempting to enforce a TPM on computers (keyword: trusted computing).
When the iPhone came out, this all suddenly became perfectly accepted.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next-Generation_Secure_Computi...
According to this Reddit thread [1], you could easily install applications to a Palm from a memory stick. Additionally, I am not aware that Palm applications needed to be signed by the device producer (i.e. the device producer could not decide which applications are allowed vs forbidden on the device).
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Palm/comments/tmvm9z/is_there_a_way...
Palm even provided the source code of the built-in apps like the calendar etc as sample code with their SDK, leading to a huge ecosystem of freeware or shareware "Calendar Plus"-type applications that just added small quality of life features
I learned 68k assembler in my teens for the purpose of cracking Palm apps for my Palm IIIe. I obviously had no credit card, and I had very little money.
The birth of the iPhone changed a lot of things, but it took a few years to reach critical mass.
So corporate profit over users.
Another acceleration was google turning to shit as well.
Not using the social parts (likes) etc. though. I'm using it as a way to share photos and what I'm up to with family without forced login. Like a homepage basically. It is not trying to distract visitors with pointing to other blogs either.