I would argue that a lot of our crap can't be produced anymore because of automated moderation and the DMCA. Remixes of old videogame songs, animutations, fan lore websites, these all get targeted constantly, and it's disenfranchising and disincentivizing people. They're scared whatever thing they made is going to get a takedown request, or the website they upload it to will not accept it because it's legally toxic. And before anything is said, no, not everyone uploaded to their own site even back in the late '90s. We had web portals like Newgrounds and Fark where they'd put stuff. It's when we abandoned web portals and moved to social media platforms that the suffocation began to happen, because the point wasn't to show other people in your community something you made, the point became grabbing as many generic views as possible. First that was for virality, then it was for AdSense money.
What's funny is that back in the day if you mistyped a URL it'd go nowhere. Then for a while domain squatters took over, and they'd lead you to dead end traps slinging porn or pyramid schemes. Those dead end traps were on the fringes however, where nobody really ventured. Nowadays everywhere is designed like that, except instead of porn it's corporate ads, and the pyramid schemes are run by people making videos those corporate ads play over.
What's funny is that back in the day if you mistyped a URL it'd go nowhere. Then for a while domain squatters took over, and they'd lead you to dead end traps slinging porn or pyramid schemes. Those dead end traps were on the fringes however, where nobody really ventured. Nowadays everywhere is designed like that, except instead of porn it's corporate ads, and the pyramid schemes are run by people making videos those corporate ads play over.