I was playing with some old UNIX software, and in the help text the dev said they were collecting foreign currency and asked people to send postcards with foreign currency, listing their full name and personal address. It was last updated in 1995.

I'm not that "way back when everything was better" person, but I agree.

Nothing was monetized mid-2000s? That sentence, while still an exaggeration, would have made sense 10 years earlier. Also "ragebait and attention seeking" were rampant on these "forums focused on discussion".

<blink>!!!

As quiVadisHomines says, too, the 90's '90s net was a simpler time; but I think that was because it was well-backed by schools and even then mostly unknown -- September Effect notwithstanding.

Is it capitalism or just the tribe-too-large problem? Both, where we're not united enough to socially correct the behaviour that would be knocked down sooner with a smaller group?

Anyway, I miss the enforced simplicity of no-images/rare-images Usenet, and how it highlighted the writing and the ideas.

It's beyond me to dream up a suitable Usenet replacement, but I know for sure that FB, IG, Lemmy, they're solving a different problem.

IMO there's "the Internet before Canter and Siegel" and "the Internet after Canter and Siegel".

On the pre C&S Internet, not only was nothing monetized, there was a sense that even having an ad for something commercial was against the culture. The downside was that the pre C&S Internet was small, slow and limited.

Overall, I think the 2025 Internet is much better than 1994. But, there were certainly things to appreciate about an Internet without ads, without algorithms trying to win the attention economy, etc.