Here's my theory: One of the reasons the Internet is (was) so good is that it was a communication mechanism with a filter. It used to be that you had to work hard (and pay more) to host anything on the Web and get your content seen. That meant that the Web had more high-quality content, written by high-quality people. Inaccessibility on the content authoring and hosting side is a feature, not a bug. Now that anyone c…
Fwiw, I disagree. To me, the best sites on the old internet we made by generous people donating their time and energy to make something cool, and nowadays
1. The internet is no longer cool in the same way,
2. The community is different
& most importantly
3. The vast amount of ad-based commercial websites.
Adding a financial barrier would just make it more dominated by commercial entities, and people wanting to share their stuff for fun would be more likely to post in a silod social media app instead of a website.