Ask HN: What was the Internet like before corporations got their hands on it?
One thing that hasn't been mentioned in this thread is chat rooms. It was quite common to enter a chat room with complete strangers and become actual friends with them. The Internet was truly the first "safe space" where no one felt they needed to hide the real part of themselves or self-censor. You might never learn their real name, but you learned the person behind the handle.I've written about this before: https://johnrockefeller.net/you-know-what-i-miss-the-unlimit...There were quite a few instances where people from chat rooms on Yahoo and otherwise became real friends separated by distance only, talking on the telephone nightly.