The internet was so much better until around 2014-2015 with Gamergate, the rise of the alt right, Trump and the complete polarization of every community. The alt right managed to outright take over and radicalize so many forums and communities. People only began to notice it until after the transformation was complete or close to it and by then, it was too late.

I'm not gonna argue that things weren't different back then, because they were, but they also weren't good either. Gamergate didn't create its frothing hordes of chuds from whole cloth, it provided a rallying point and radicalization path for disaffected men who were already self-serving chauvinist pigs: it was a breaking point where politically ignorant western chauvinists were functionally made to acknowledge their biases and bigotry and either embrace or reject them, and most of them embraced it and started exalting the vile bullshit they'd always carried with them but hadn't thought about or had consciously kept in private.

Social spaces were still dominated by shitty sexist, racist, homophobic, and transphobic guys, it just wasn't a fucking crusade for them yet; they wanted to intrude upon and silence conversation about anything outside their perspective as a function of their ingrained biases, but they lacked the militancy and focus that the reactionary movement behind Gamergate would later give them..