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The Internet Is Kind of a Predatory Cesspit Now
(www.stephendiehl.com)
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this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2026
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Re-read what they said. They're talking about modem dialup to a long distance number, so the phone call the modem made was long distance and hence charged at the higher rate.
It's ok to not get it, this is pre internet and a very long time ago
Early internet, yes. Not pre-internet.
BBS's pre-date what we know as the internet - that is, commercially available interconnections via an ISP to a "wider web" of servers. Pedantically you can argue there is overlap with the period when only universities and a couple of tech companies were interconnected but calling that the internet is like calling a horse and buggy a car because it has wheels and carries passengers
I think we may just have a difference in perspective. I would call a buggy a car because it has wheels and carries passengers. I wouldn't call it an automobile, because that implies an automatic engine, but I would consider it a form of car.
Same with BBS/Internet. Once you have a series of servers interconnected, and have access to them via an ISP, yes. That is a form of early internet. It dates back to something like the 1960s. Going back to NASA and government usage.
So I think we're talking about the same thing with just a difference of perspective and opinion.
But you didn't access a BBS via an ISP, that's one of the key differences. You dialled your modem directly into the BBS