I remember fondly the early internet which was full of hobby sites and forums and niche link rings. This was an innocent better time where the internet was full of small scale creativity and sharing and mostly kindness.
I hosted my own site, in my bedroom. I hosted a counter-strike server, too. Comcast hadn't shut hosting down yet.
Anyway, that has nothing to do with online banking, services, security, apps, media. Let's just use youtube--one of the greatest sites of all time, hands down. Huge utility, huge entertainment. Free, via advertising. Would have never happened without it.
There's so, so much trash, webspam, etc on the modern web. I hate it, too. I don't even have warm feelings about youtube anymore. But advertising opened a lot of doors.
They still haven't. I host a site from my Comcast connection just fine.