I remember when the first spam message showed up on usenet. People weren't happy, complained with the admin of the spammer's system, and the spammer lost his account. That's why spammers started to create their own spam systems and everybody else started to block those systems.

The internet was open and unmoderated when nobody was abusing it. Once people start abusing it, it will be moderated. It's unavoidable.

> It's also interesting that the zeitgeist at the time favored conservatives

I don't think that's true. The 1990s saw the rise of conservative talk radio and of Fox News, but they weren't as dominant as they became later, and the 1990s were a pretty liberal time in much of the western world.

> liberals were the then-staunch supporters of free speech.

Still are. But even then, they didn't tolerate intolerance. It's just that at the time, intolerance was universally seen as bad, and not central to a rising ideology as it is now.