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> Prior to social media there was usenet, specialized forums, imageboards such as 4chan, and mass use of IRC. The average social media user would recoil in horror at the 'divisive' content that was common to that time period.

This was stuff you had to look for. I certainly looked for it and found it, but it was also trivially avoidable.

> REAL neonazis spread their message with impunity

Still plenty of "real" neonazis on the internet, and a lot more friendly venues for them if they stick to those ideas of theirs that have become more popular since they were once ghettoized on Stormfront, and keep the master race talk to coded memes and oblique references.

Many of those extra-divisive platforms are still around in one form or another, and are likely bigger than they were in the past (thanks again to reduced barriers to entry). But a normal person can avoid engaging in those platforms entirely by just… not going on them.

Imo the danger of modern social media’s algorithmic feeds is that it draws in otherwise perfectly normal people, who would never voluntarily seek out the divisive content that gets promoted on their feeds. So now we have the worst of both worlds: platforms with violent political rhetoric are still highly available to those who would seek them out, and more average folks are drawn to seek them out by the “dull roar” that draws them in on the major social platforms.

> platforms with violent political rhetoric are still highly available to those who would seek them out

I would submit that they are no longer highly available or their core userbase has moved on to the "dark web". The genius of the centralized social media platform is that it lives on advertising dollars. The advertisers will pull back whenever a platform becomes too uncontrolled. This was the case when Pewdiepie's accidental Nazi reference video was released. A massive pullback in advertising dollars 'forced' YouTube to reconsider its previously lax content policies and policing. That's not to say that YouTube is some pleasant walled garden, but rather that those creating videos and making real money from the site are incentivized to police their own behavior and rhetoric. Most people talking about 'divisive' content are talking around the Trump/QAnon fiasco. Which is very different from the internet I grew up on where even on a 'kids site' you would often see users calling for outright genocide of specific racial groups.

> becomes too uncontrolled

Given the amount of content out there, there's potential to be stuck in a local maximum where there's enough harmful content to cause negative externalities, but not enough to be seen as the majority of the content. This is reinforced by algorithmic feeds and targeted advertising where there's just no way for someone (whether the advertisers themselves or an independent watchdog) to tell what's actually going on, since their feed will be significantly different from someone stuck in an echo chamber full of harmful content.

> Most people talking about 'divisive' content are talking around the Trump/QAnon fiasco

Not even Trump per-se. The problem goes far beyond Trump and his political party when he - the supposed "leader" - gets booed by his own crowd. QAnon is just one example of terribly harmful content out there, but there's plenty more, from the Covid vaccine conspiracies, alternative "medicine", or just plain racism/nationalism and neo-Nazism.

> where even on a 'kids site' you would often see users calling for outright genocide of specific racial groups.

The forum software wasn't promoting said content though, so they were likely to remain a minority, which is both easier to control and explain away ("there are bad people on the Internet, learn to ignore it"). Facebook on the other hand will happily keep feeding you more and more of said content if it sees that you engage with it.

> Prior to social media there was usenet, specialized forums, imageboards such as 4chan, and mass use of IRC

The content was segregated and you explicitly had to seek it out. Not to mention, there was no algorithm to ease you into it, so even someone whose political views would lean towards a particular affiliation might recoil in horror at the craziness they'd see on one of those "specialized forums", where as Facebook will happily ease you in bit by bit until the craziness appears normal, even if you originally had no intention of reading about/discussing politics and just wanted to keep up with your friends' holiday pictures.

> is focused primarily on promoting the interests of one of a handful of relatively similar political parties over the others

I disagree. I believe the vast majority of divisive content nowadays is created & promoted by random people who don't benefit financially from it; in fact there's no single source (political party, etc) that would pay to originate this stuff, instead Facebook and other social media just use any divisive content to increase ad impressions, regardless of the political affiliation of said content. I'm sure political parties sometimes benefit from these "useful idiots" but even they don't actually fully control the narrative.

> in fact there's no single source (political party, etc) that would pay to originate this stuff

There are private firms working in cahoots with state actors to influence opinion and shape narrative all across the internet and especially on social media.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook–Cambridge_Analytica...

> I believe the vast majority of divisive content nowadays is created & promoted by random people who don't benefit financially from it;

You're both wrong, and you're both right. Facebook isn't focused on promoting the interests of any particular political party. But there are political forces abusing Facebook's algorithms to promote their message. Most recent example: https://apnews.com/article/china-tiktok-facebook-influencers...

4chan and most of what you described are much more recent than the period of Internet Jack is being nostalgic for. Obviously there were ton of assholes, trolls and bad people on Usenet and IRC before year 2000 and around that time, but everybody was more active so the "good ones" usually won and kept the community working. But it was an easier task because of raw numbers.

Today...well, for more than a decade now, to do moderation at scale and emerge content you have to automate it, and Internet is now a giant business, so the incentives are totally different and so are the outcomes. There can be still a few happy islands where life is good as it was, and by number of users they are probably even bigger than ~2000 Internet, but they are now minority.