Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The problem that these new communication platforms are trying to deal with is unprecedented. The early internet had to deal with the same problems, yet it was much more free than the internet of today. This isn't a false idealization of the past - I was around at the time. To me the only reason the internet matters is to let individual people speak and be heard - without being silenced by advertisers, the governmen…
Large portions of the Internet were cordoned off from commerce altogether. There was a weekend back in the 90s (probably more than one, but this is the one I remember) where there was an Internet-wide netsplit that cut commercial ISPs like Ripco off from the rest of the Internet. Most conversations on the Internet took place on Usenet, and even in the alt. hierarchy, there were rules and politics behind what stuff go…
I always believed that the reason it took years for Usenet to do something about spam is because (1) before spam got so bad they had to do something about it, there were no existing restrictions on the propagation of messages and (2) a widespread ethic among those running news servers that any restrictions on propagation, even restrictions on spam, were to be avoided.
What sort of content, in your opinion, was denied propagation back when most conversations on the Internet took place on Usenet?
I got the impression that the ban on commerce over the US backbone was to prevent making any business big enough to be able to afford a PR person or a lobbyist in Washington afraid that the Internet was a threat to its revenue stream.
Back when only a small fraction of the public knew anything about the Internet, the US Government was spending a relatively large amount of money keeping it running, and was consequently vulnerable to sniping from journalists and politicians to the effect that the US government is spending money to giving, e.g., people who are sexually attracted to people dressed up as animals, a forum to communicate with each other.
You and I know that the marginal cost of adding an alt.sex.furries news group to the Internet was so low as to be not worth thinking about, but it would've been hard to get that point across to the voting public.
People were worried for example about the National Science Foundation, one of the major funders of the Internet, getting one of these:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Fleece_Award
Or maybe the ban on commerce over the US backbone was a concession the US backbone's patrons in Washington needed to make to get Congress to continue to allocate funds for it.
The ban was mostly successful only because very few people wanted to do commerce on the internet while the ban on commerce over the US backbone was in place. Possible exception: the last year or so of the ban when the internet was growing very quickly. Exception: people seeking W2 workers or W2 jobs rather than 1099 workers / jobs would've liked to be able to use ba.jobs to advertise, but IIRC it was a moderated newsgroup, and the moderator, like most people running internet infrastructure back then, grudgingly recognized the need for the ban (i.e., to protect the Internet's supporters in Washington from ridicule or from the animosity of powerful groups).