As others have pointed out, our fond memories of the Old Internet being "democratic" may be a little off.

But. I think it's fair to say it felt more free, it had a high barrier of technical entry, which filtered out most of the public, and there was no craven race to monetize and enshitify absolutely every single of our interactions.

Mostly because corporations were in the process of figuring out how to do all that with this new Internet thing.