It was a complex system and I wouldn't want to describe it all here, but the fact that you and I can talk to each other in front of anyone who wants to listen in, is far ahead of anything that existed then.
What? You're really arguing that, to put a year on it, in 1990 we didn't have a free society and democracy?
edit: maybe if you say it 3x fast I wouldn't have had to have vaccinations to attend public school when I was a kid?
From jailing anti-war protestors (WWI) to jailing anti-war protestors (Vietnam) to allowing corporations to put serious, nearly life-ruining heat on whistleblowers, to the way the media largely operates by uncritically republishing press releases and communiques, I would say it's pretty clear that we're living in a closely managed society with a severely manipulated democratic process.
Today we enjoy many freedoms nobody had in 01990, largely thanks to the internet, but those freedoms are probably not going to last much longer, also thanks to the internet.
BTW it is also useless in any other scenario.
Yes, distracting from your main point by intentionally attracting attention to something completely unrelated is bad.
And it's good to know who those griefers are before that becomes a life-or-death question, as it eventually was for Turing, Swartz, Assange, and so many others.