Comment by RiverCrochet

> I will often find a blog post on Hacker News that really resonates. And when I go to check the rest of the site there’s three other posts. And I think: I wish you’d write more!

I really miss that period in the 90's and early 2000's when:

- people were doing interesting things online and tending to those spaces regularly,

- Google actually worked and it was easy to find those things,

- Myspace/Facebook wasn't a thing

I'd love to have the general mood and vibe of the 90's back, which I think contributed greatly to the early Internet and the ability and desire to be public within it.

But even in the 90's, spam was a problem, and it's grown amd morphed into different things over time. Banner ad popups, link farms, SEO optimization, etc.

Age verification laws are going to fully destroy the Internet for anything other than approved business uses, such as selling stuff. Soon, any "public" left will be spammers-spammers in the modern form of influencers either directly trying to sell you something or sponsored in order to support/create a market. Some may argue we've mostly reached that point.

It's over. The forward thinkers need to think beyond the Internet. Until then it's closed groups and chats.