Comment by coldtea

>People complaining about things they had when they were young and no longer have is nothing new. Happens to most generations. The music was better, the food was great, people were friendlier, etc. Or so people believe. Not exactly true of course.

In many cases very much true. The trope that "people always complain for things missing from the past, so they're always wrong" needs to die. They're wrong or not depending on a case by case basis (depending on the thing), and based on the standards they put forward:

If you hate corporate culture and like DIY and individual expession, the 90s internet was 100x better.

If you like the "bazaar" style FOSS communities and FOSS idealism, the late 90s was very much better.

>Objectively, the internet thirty years ago was kind of shit. It was exciting (I was there) but also pretty bad. Things were slow, lame, ugly, amateurish, hopelessly insecure, etc.

I was already loving it, you don't have to sell it to me so hard!