What I got from this article was sheer nostalgia, mixed with early-internet optimism. The fact is, on the internet these days, you can't allow everyone to have

What I got from this article was sheer nostalgia, mixed with early-internet optimism. The fact is, on the internet these days, you can't allow everyone to have an equal voice without threat of moderation, because more often than not people will use that voice to spew hatred and vitriol just for fun. In the early days it was somewhat easy for good people to shout down or ignore the bad actors, but these days there are more bad actors than there are good people--if this isn't the case, it's surely the case that the bad actors simply have more time, and the good people ultimately flee and do something else with their time.