@Serenus @Daojoan yeah, this existed in various places (*especially* _outside_ the United States, where suburbia and monopolies really ruined things). there also existed people hosting stuff on spare computers and using dynamic dns providers

you gain some, you lose some. nowadays connectivity and compute are *way* easier and more affordable, but the cultural knowledge that you _can_ self-host seems to be disappearing

@Daojoan to join the "well actually" crowd, email absolutely did have throttling, although retry and backoff logic tended to be much more reliable and well-tested back then

there was a lot of the old internet that wasn't democratized and "yours" (e.g. acquiring connectivity, acquiring compute), although the details have shifted around a lot