BBS were so much fun back then. We had a local one in South Florida where we would all get on and we would have meet ups on weekends so we could talk in person and hang out. I used to log on with a 2400 baud modem which I upgraded to a 14k myself. It felt so fast at the time. I also would get on the telnet talkers and Irc to meet folks. I was a shy awkward teenager back then so meeting people on those services was great.
Back when AOL started getting popular my friends and I would hoard those installation disks so we could make new accounts when we needed to. Back then they would actually charge per hour to be online. We would use credit card generator programs to get online for free until they caught us and we had to make new accounts. Once AOL went unlimited it was a game changer. The bad part was it was hard getting on due to everyone jumping on.
Wouldn’t the only reason for them to even want to be a part of this would be to monitize? If they can’t post advertisements what would they do here?