Oh lord no. I’m not sure that’s true at all! I mean in the early cool era of the internet there was a concept of a “netizen” and a window of brief joy, but the internet has always had domineering trolls, bullies, spaces where clumsy newbies were brutally flamed etc.

The main difference is that more spaces were quasi-professional and non-pseudonymous, in that one largely got one’s internet access and identity (IP address, email address, invitation) from the institution of higher learning one attended or worked for. So there were direct, two or three degrees separation consequences (my boss knows someone at your institution) in those spaces. I suppose this is what you are referring to.

(In my early era of commercial internet work I can remember a colleague shutting down an accidentally abusive scraping bot by working out who was likely to be the boss of the person running it and phoning them up)

But away from those spaces were many places that were just as bad as they are now.

The internet has always (in my time of using it, which is all of my adult life as someone who is over half a century old) demonstrated that a good culture is a question of starting conditions and quick maintenance actions.

A non-trivial amount of the worst behaviour I have personally witnessed on the internet happened before the year 2000.