Definitely. And all of their 25 users. It was literally a non-issue even back then but titles like The Terrorist’s Handbook and The Anarchist’s Cookbook had a lot of shock value.

Animal torture is such a fringe and infinitely small area that even if it’s deplorable it’s not, and never has been, prevalent in any meaningful way.

Funny enough the first fallout we had among admins when we started The Pirate Bay was about a cat torture video that forced us to take a stance on freedom/anti-censorship vs decency and compassion. (The latter won, but not without losses in the team because they found it hypocritical that we “censored” uploads.)

Animal torture is highly prevalent in the world. It's even part of our mainstream supply chain from food, cosmetics, or medicine. Torture for the sole purpose of torture is what you are describing and not what I was referring to.

I remember some high school kids dying during that period, after trying to follow pipe bomb tphile pipe bomb recipes.

Hindsight is rose-tinted.

Tho I think those kinds of things weren’t as easy to discover or as widely talked about as the internet was largely a hobbyist thing at the time

I don't think that's the case here. The early internet and social media's original function and intent was basically to share information, learn things that would otherwise be nearly impossible to know, like what's going on across the globe and to keep in touch with friends/family.

Today's internet is a far cry from those ideals. It's about a handful of enormous companies sharing private data, shaping the way people think by promoting fake news and suppressing differing opinions. It's about making a buck of advertising which makes it impossible to surf the web without add blockers. Social media has devolved into a cesspool of hate and a fake sense of self worth.