There were a lot less idiots on the internet in the early days of the internet. It was a function of the difficulty of getting on the internet.

Many of the early ISPs played shell games with ad companies. NetZero is one of the most famously documented of the 90s dot-com age promising "free internet" with ads/MLM schemes, but they were one of the pack. The few I can recall today to google on the Bings, including NetZero, surprisingly still exist and survived the dot-com implosion as more traditional ISPs, but NetZero is the most useful example to give as it still bears the scars of its early scam-like history its own brand name. I don't think they've offered actual "zero dollar" service in more than a decade, but that's where their name originated.

I recall so many fly-by-night ads and ads+MLM schemes in the early internet, a lot of which I watched in Slashdot takedowns and teardowns at the time.

The early days of online payments (paypal) maybe. Unless they're talking about usenet selling, in which case I don't remember it being 'thrilling' to get a money order in the mail.

I sold/bought music CDs as well as anime model kits on the usenet (on the .marketplace ones) around the time of "Eternal September".

It was pretty thrilling to get money order in the mail.

There was little to no scamming goin on.

If someone wanted to be a bad actor, they'd be run out of town pretty quickly.

I miss those days.