I recall a hotelier who advertised free WiFi at a time when everyone thought that monetizing WiFi was a hot new revenue stream.

"What," he was asked, "is the business model for free WiFi?"

"What," he retorted, "is the business model for free washrooms?"

It was much smaller and people wrote on Usenet to connect with one another, not to shout in the void while corporations hoover all the content.

The web was so much smaller back then. Just imagine I turned the user (not automated in any way) based clicks that can occur from a link like reddit today towards your site then. We called it the slashdot effect way back, but that many clicks might take down the entire ISP.

Many of these sites business model was simply "don't cost too much". The moment the web got big a lot of these sites died. Now add DDOS for fun and profit became a thing, most people moved to huge advertising based providers/hosters (think FB).

Simply put, we're never getting the old web back. Now, we may get something new, but it will be different and still far more commercial.

I agree the early web was better, but it was less, and it has killed off other media, so now it has to be more. I sorely want the decentralized, personal passion web back, and the current small web crowd seems the most anti-AI bot group I hear from.

I also just don't expect "Claude, what is some random Gen Xer's opinion about the early work of Paul Thomas Anderson?" to really be the bulk of how this is used.

X11 pop under ads were a thing around at least 2001

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=88041&page=1

As were punch the monkey and similar banner ads

https://www.computerworld.com/article/1360466/i-refuse-to-pu...

When was the great age of the web that wasn’t inundated with ads and SEO?

It was really easy on old school search engines like Altavista.