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It wasn’t just the moderation. Earlier internet had a much more self-selecting audience. Trolling was in its artisanal infancy and there weren’t incentives to s
by coffeebeqn 2y ago
It wasn’t just the moderation. Earlier internet had a much more self-selecting audience. Trolling was in its artisanal infancy and there weren’t incentives to spam and scam people since you couldn’t monetize on such things. State and other propaganda actors didn’t take it as a serious platform, there weren’t trillion dollar companies monetizing your every move, and a hundred other variables
- mingus88 2y agoIn that era also, the communities you had to chose from were higher quality, simply due to the barrier to entry of being always online. To continue with IRC as an example, having access to a shell account where you could set up a bouncer to lurk 24/7 in your channels was simply beyond the grasp of most people. So the people you had available to create communities with were those who were invested in keeping things nice. Why bother with all that overhead only to read shitpost memes and rage bait? Today the default mode for everyone is to be always online. It’s actually harder to disconnect now. The quality of the communities reflects this.
- sneak 2y ago> To continue with IRC as an example, having access to a shell account where you could set up a bouncer to lurk 24/7 in your channels was simply beyond the grasp of most people. Still is. IRC is much the same as it has ever been.
- disqard 2y agoA bit late to this discussion, but your comment really reminded me of this Stewart Brand quote from his 1985 interview with KQED Focus magazine: "Computers suppress our animal presence. When you communicate through a computer, you communicate like an angel."
- wordpad25 2y agoStill too rose-tinted, I clearly remember the early internet being a minefield of viruses and malware and pop-ups and savvy teenagers hacking your favorite niche communuty forum cuz you were one security patch behind...
- chasd00 2y agoHeh yeah and irc wasnt exactly filled with upstanding honorable citizens either.
- brianbest101 2y ago[dead]
- AznHisoka 2y agoI’m not sure there wasnt as much spam and scams back then. I fondly remember 99% of my AOL inbox was filled with porn… But ppl were definitely much more open and trustworthy back then. You could start a conversation with any random stranger and they wouldnt immediately dismiss you as some sort of scammer. Try that today and people will immediately flag you as a scammer
- canucker2016 2y agoUsenet pre-"green-card-spam" was a relative utopia. Sure you had arguments. That's where 'flamewar' came from. But quickly people tired of that and created *.advocacy sub-newsgroups to let people vent in their corner of the net. Then domains were opened up for commerce a few years later and eternal September became a thing... The net never recovered, it just used up more bandwidth.
- freehorse 2y agoTrolling used to be more about pranking each other than about organised scam or attacks, or manufacturing consent for governments or promoting political parties. It was more like an internet art form. I guess this is about what one can consider as the internet being more innocent back then.
- sangnoir 2y ago> State and other propaganda actors didn’t take it as a serious platform Security was awful for both the client and server. Who needs a warrant when all the user data is an SQL injection away? Broswers not fussy about https, Java Applets, flash, browser toolbars, XSS - the Internet must have been like an open book for anyone with access to backbone traffic.
- p_l 2y agoI remember when IE actually warned you when you went to HTTPS!
- PoppinFreshDo 2y agoThe trolling was epic. sigh
- dartos 2y agoThere weren’t even trillion dollar companies at all back then