Old internet lacked the following, which made it better:

• Scrolling shenanigans (fixed scrolling points, pointless animation and content position that changes with scrolling)
• Navigating pages that doesn’t create a history for you to easily back-forward them
• Everything can be easily monetized
• Using javascript for page layout that could be done with plain html
• The worst kind of intrusive ads, notifications and cookies
• Everything looks samey and “professional”
• Centralization
• Surgically precise SEO

Content wise, I think points 3, 6 and 7 are the main reasons why we “don’t have as much interesting content”. Too much focus on looking professional, on being marketable, on being profitable. 7, centralization, is how facebook, reddit and others pretty much killed several smaller forums

I love that neocities.org exists, you can make your own website and have a domain there for free, much like the old days of geocities. The problem is that your content won’t be found unless you advertise it elsewhere.

In a way, I suspect the centralized corporate internet is much like the difference between humans living in several, sparsely populated villages, where things and people feel more “connected”, vs living in large urban sprawls, where you’re surrounded by people and stuff, but hardly interact or care about most of it.