Quantity is a quality in itself. Your BBS was never going to support a million users. Once people figured out the network effect it was over for the masses. They went where the people are, and we've all suffered since.
"we" is doing a lot of work here. No clubhouse got optical switching working and all that fiber in the ground for example. Beyond POC, the Internet was all commercial interests.
This is sort of like arguing cutlery is a military enterprise. Like yes, that’s where knives came from. But that’s disconnected enough from modern design, governance and other fundamental concerns as to be irrelevant. The internet—and less ambiguously, the World Wide Web—are more commercial than military.
Source? Not doubting. But I have a friend who was buying airline tickets through CompuServe in the late 80s/early 90s.
Such as news and magazine sites, many of which are actively dying due to a lack of revenue.
I personally wish these sites could all switch to paid models, because I also don’t like ads.
But absent that, I’d like to support the sites I use so that they don’t go out of business.
Most publishers of content online are ad supported and struggling, and I want to make sure I’m contributing to their revenue somehow.
I don’t feel bad about blocking ads on sites I pay for though.