I was born in '81 so I'm probably not qualified to say.

I made a site in the late 90's, biology-online.org which I harried universities and whatnot to link to which they happily obliged, ad-free educational content laid out well. Nowadays that kind of solicitation is ignored. All I'm saying is it was easier then than what it is now, and large platforms deciding what gets seen and what isn't certainly doesn't grease the wheels of discovery.

Not GP, but I believe they meant it is a lot harder for things to get seen on the Internet now than it was on the Internet before, not IRL before.

That might be it. The GGP was talking about the history of civilization, so it could be either way.