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I grew up on AOL's internet and it really wasn't that bad. The WWW was a lot different back then. Remember, this was even before Google! The article acts like A

by ssharp 5y ago

I grew up on AOL's internet and it really wasn't that bad. The WWW was a lot different back then. Remember, this was even before Google! The article acts like AOL was some wasteland that the company never bothered to update. AOL offered a lot of content, games, file sharing, chat, message boards, email, etc. that was difficult to get elsewhere for most people. Our family (myself included) liked AOL enough that we continued to pay a reduced monthly fee to connect to their service over TCP/IP when the local ISP's started offering better connection options.

Alex3917 5y ago
> I grew up on AOL's internet and it really wasn't that bad. It was down for a couple hours per day almost every single day during the few years when they were in hyper growth. But the actual service itself was pretty great when it worked.
- TuringNYC 5y ago
  Funny story - they switched to an Unlimited hours policy (slowly creeping up from several hours over time.) As a result people just dialed up for long periods of time and made lines busy. It had a second effect - it was busy so often, that once you dialed in it was in your best interest not to dial out...because who knows when you could get back in. Thus the congestion intensified. On top of that, there were programs like A-O-Hell which let people circumvent payment (and it seemed AOL liked it because who knows what metrics were lifted as a result). So you had even more users on the system, again with no incentive to use the system less.
  - spideymans 5y ago
    >On top of that, there were programs like A-O-Hell which let people circumvent payment Looked up AOHell on Wikipedia and landed on this interesting tidbit: >Most notably, the program included a function for stealing the passwords of America Online users and, according to its creator, contains the first recorded mention of the term "phishing"
    - dvtrn 5y ago
      I don’t know if I necessarily want to spill out all the details, but very early on for me AOL access came about when I discovered a way to “spoof” payments (not using A-O-Hell) via a checking account and routing number that AOL didn’t bother validating. That lasted for about a year, until one day my family got a visit from the local police and some government spooks who wanted to know “how did you get these account details?” Dad was furious. Wouldn’t let me around a computer until high school came along.

by ssharp 5y ago

Alex3917 5y ago

> I grew up on AOL's internet and it really wasn't that bad. It was down for a couple hours per day almost every single day during the few years when they were in hyper growth. But the actual service itself was pretty great when it worked.

TuringNYC 5y ago
Funny story - they switched to an Unlimited hours policy (slowly creeping up from several hours over time.) As a result people just dialed up for long periods of time and made lines busy. It had a second effect - it was busy so often, that once you dialed in it was in your best interest not to dial out...because who knows when you could get back in. Thus the congestion intensified. On top of that, there were programs like A-O-Hell which let people circumvent payment (and it seemed AOL liked it because who knows what metrics were lifted as a result). So you had even more users on the system, again with no incentive to use the system less.
- spideymans 5y ago
  >On top of that, there were programs like A-O-Hell which let people circumvent payment Looked up AOHell on Wikipedia and landed on this interesting tidbit: >Most notably, the program included a function for stealing the passwords of America Online users and, according to its creator, contains the first recorded mention of the term "phishing"
  - dvtrn 5y ago
    I don’t know if I necessarily want to spill out all the details, but very early on for me AOL access came about when I discovered a way to “spoof” payments (not using A-O-Hell) via a checking account and routing number that AOL didn’t bother validating. That lasted for about a year, until one day my family got a visit from the local police and some government spooks who wanted to know “how did you get these account details?” Dad was furious. Wouldn’t let me around a computer until high school came along.