And before that, there were many fountains of ignorance to be found on Usenet (alt.* :), Archie, Gopher...
It was in general a smaller community, and that kept the amount of drivel small, too. But it wasn't all as rosy as you seem to remember.
To a certain degree every generation thinks the Net it grew up with is the Real Net, and the Net that came afterwards is a wasteland.
But this is in regards to specific sites and communities; "The Net" has long since become too large to be considered a single community.
Timecube, dancing babies, blink/marquee tags, MIDI music backgrounds on yet another "hey look at these pictures of the new muffler I put on my car!" site... ah, the good ol' days.
I honestly haven't noticed any increase in drivel, as a proportion of overall content, on the web now compared to when I first got on in 1998.
The takeaway: If the Network Effects aren't harnessed for the cause of freedom and cool, beautiful stuff, then someone else will harness them to make money off of drivel.
You are essentially talking of the same kind of barriers of entry that Anil complains about the Facebook et al put up around data exchange.
In the 90s and early 2000s if you wanted to put something online you had to have at least a moderate level of technical aptitude. Compare that to today's nonstop garbage fountain of ignorance on sites like tumblr, twitter and facebook.