> RMS, TBL, Torvalds, I could just send them an email in the 90s and they'd respond, it was pretty remarkable. I don't think this stopped just because of spam,

> RMS, TBL, Torvalds, I could just send them an email in the 90s and they'd respond, it was pretty remarkable. I don't think this stopped just because of spam, harassment, or other bad behavior. A big part of it is just community size. When the community of internet users was smaller, you could interact with everyone who reached out in a reasonable amount of time. As it got bigger, that is no longer possible because of the sheer number of people.