In grand scheme of things amount of content was abysmal compared to today. And today you have way way more of free content, created without financial initiatives by people who are passionate about the subject. Why? Because human nature didn’t change, and we got many orders of magnitude more people online.
In the grand scheme of things the lack of ads or javascript is as irrelevant now as those times when you had to go to the post office to wish someone a happy birthday halfway across the country.
We can learn from past generations, especially about large societal and cultural issues, even if those past generations didn't have things like penicillin or TikTok.
The civilization won't go anywhere, we're too smart now, too capable, tiktok or not.
This is an advanced level of naivete combined with arrogance I wish that I had. Unfortunately, I've studied history and I can very clearly see the parallels between now and moments in the fall of the Roman Empire. Nothing is forever, and our civilization will fall if we do nothing out of complacence.
History shows us that such hubris and complacency rarely ends well.
I recently read someone here arguing that "without ads, there's no incentive for anyone to create new content!"
If you're older, you can't help but know better. The majority of the web, in its first few years, was full of "content" and there was, broadly speaking, zero financial incentive.*
* To be fair, there were banner ads and, once Netscape introduced popup windows, even ads that hijacked your screen... you'd have been nuts to take that as an incentive though. People don't write essays for $2.50 a month.