Firstly Flash development isn’t web development. I’m not commenting on whether it was fun nor accessible. I said it was required because web standards had been stagnated thanks to the glacial pace of changes to the standards by the w3c, and the browser monopoly introduced by Microsoft Internet Explorer.
This isn’t hating Flash nor MS. It’s just a fact.
And no, web development wasn’t that wild back then. Flash development was. People had given up doing anything wild in HTML. Whereas in the 90s people were experimenting with HTML. And in the era of HTML5 anything imaginable can be realised in HTML. But for the period you’re describing, people didn’t build websites. They built Flash sites that were served via HTTP. There is a difference.
Also ad tracking has nothing to do with web development. Yes I do agree the web is more hostile now as a user, but I specifically said “web development”.
As for the monopolies you described, those walled gardens were in place back in the era you described too. As was ad tracking. Your era had all of the enshittification of modern web but with none of the upsides of modern web development technologies.
That’s why it was the dark ages. Corporations owned the internet; every part of it. Yes it’s still bad now but at least we have a choice of user agents and well supported web standards. Which wasn’t the case in the era of Flash.