this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
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Yeah even mid-90's "the Internet" started with a doodadootdootdadadoot and wasn't exactly fast for the vast majority of little. Early 28.8kbps came out around '94-95, and real-time video of decent quality wasn't so much a thing. More like RealPlayer buffering.
That said, there was still plenty of janky stuff around. BBS's weren't uncommon even before that and generally had people uploading all sorts of stuff. Porn was plentiful, though you often had to wait upwards of a minute for that file to load and see if there were actual boobs.
Newsgroups were full of weird groups as well as fairly normal ones where the occasional troll would post nasty stuff.
You could definitely still run across predators hanging around in various places. IRC had tons of them, and A/S/L is a pretty well-known intro to this day. There were some video chats, though it would have been a pixel, low-FPS mess.
Nowadays the internet is faster, more connected globally and with more people. There's still terrible shit but I don't know that it's any more unexpected/unavoidable than back in the 28.8 days. Parents should be aware and children should be educated on how to be safe online, and platforms should do their best to stem abuse but that's not really an easy thing without style pretty strict ID requirements, which are often strongly resisted for privacy reasons.