Personally, I can't really say that I miss any of the sites designed like they were in the 90s, with their ever-rotating GIFs, Flash-based intro pages, "Designed for Netscape" badges.
And does an influencer need to have his/her own website? Not more than an ad needs its own website.
The "original Internet" is still there, and I dare say more people are using it than back in the 90s. It's just that a lot more people are also using the newer stuff that you don't like.
And that's fine.
I'd warrant a tiny fraction of users have their own blogs now compared to a decade ago?
If you lived through Eternal September, you kind of knew this was coming.
But again, just because plenty of people consume, and plenty of companies cater mostly to the consumers, doesn't mean there isn't another world out there for those who look.
E.g. if you were to search "pug lovers" two decades ago, you might find blogs posts about pugs, people's personal sites filled with images and stories of their own pugs, a small community pug-loving, pug-adopting as its own forum.
Now the first page of Google for "pug lovers" shows: a Facebook page, an Amazon page, a Pinterest page, two Etsy pages, two bespoke (catering towards dogs) storefronts, and one cute site (http://pugdogclub.org.uk/gallery/pug-lovers/).
There's no objective better or worse - people want the things all the new top results provide - but I know which era of results I prefer.
Or these new things interest them more and they don't like it. Like a frustrating addiction.
The people creating content, stupid simple websites, blogs, catalogs or very niche websites are still there, it's just not that obvious that they are there.
It's just capitalism, put a fence around something, sell access, keep people ignorant of what they're missing.
It's impossible for things to stay good under unrestrained capitalism because there's always some [even very minor] deleterious action that can be exploited for profit (financial or control). Those actions tend to proliferate and cascade.
First (at least for us, for other people there would be another "first") were the basic webpages done in Frontpage or Dreamweaver (if you had enough RAM), uploaded to free webservers like Tripod, Lycos, Geocities, copying and pasting scripts found out there to remove popups and iframes, reading Photoshop tutorials to do some effects or gifs animations. Everything were more crafted, it took more time to do these kind of things (now everything is an app or a drag and drop).
Then came the second version of the internet. Everything was a bit "more pro" - even amateur fansites payed for their hosting, they had forums, online chats, etc. The open source community allowed this. From Wordpress with its themes to phpBB2 forums, vBulletin, etc. Oh, I miss those days.
Then slowly all of that was lost. Nowadays we only have social accounts for things. Fansites? Only accounts on Twitter, INstagram, YouTuber. Ask an INfluencer if they have their own website. What for? Everything is centralized.
My dad, who started using a smartphone just 2 or 3 years ago, doesn't fully understand what the internet is. For him, it's just a set of apps (Whatsapp, Facebook, and the website of his fav newspaper). Outside that he doesn't understand there is (or there was) a full world of websites with a lot of contents.
It makes me sad because "the original internet" will be never be like what we experienced. I don't know who to blame for, tho. If I were in the shoes of Facebook or Twitter's founders I would have done the same. But they definitely have eaten all the webpages around them.