> It's impossible to produce that content because the culture was very different.
What? It's not at all impossible. Get a server, put whatever you want on it. No one is going to force you to monetize or market anything, or use a Node.js backend with AWS and React, or whatever the kids are doing these days. Basic HTML in a plain text editor still works just fine.
> What? It's not at all impossible. Get a server, put whatever you want on it.
Not in Germany. There is a set of laws called "Impressumspflicht" (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressumspflicht) which forces you to add a mandatory imprint on your website. If you do something wrong or forget to include some mandatory information (what is mandatory also depends on the kind of website), you can easily get sued (and this has often happened). In other words: It is not easy for a layperson to set up a website in a way that will not easily become a risk of becoming sued.
The context of this conversation seems to have more to do with code and complexity than legal necessities but point taken. The parent was suggesting it was impossible to create the sort of simple, personal, just for fun sites that people used to, but there's no technical reason for that to be the case.
It just happens that people add unnecessary complexity to their projects nowadays because 1) they use frameworks and tools that facilitate it and 2) it looks better on their resumes.
> The context of this conversation seems to have more to do with code and complexity than legal necessities but point taken
The laws introduce lots of complexity, which leads to lots of requirements in the code. So this is no contradiction.
> It just happens that people add unnecessary complexity to their projects nowadays because 1) they use frameworks and tools that facilitate it and 2) it looks better on their resumes.
And 3) because the law requires such complications (in my personal perspective the largest problem that causes the most headaches). Just to give another, "more EU/less German" example:
For one, it was largely un-monetised. There were no banner ads, no ad trackers, no giant shopping sites, no market-driven content design.
But many ISPs offered free web space, and HTML 1.0 was so simple almost anyone could hack together a basic site with a plain vanilla text editor.
So people did. For fun. Lots and lots of them.
It looked like crap, but it was weird/hilarious/insane/inspiring in equal measures in a way that's impossible to reproduce today.