> young internet was virtually uncensored and a 100% free for all
> The communities mostly self moderated by kicks/bans.
Kicking people off was and still is censorship and moderation. Services really try hard to not kick people off now and just police the content instead.
You were not kicked off the platform. You could join any other thousands of rooms, boards, etc. And you were only booted if you truly were a real dipshit.
You could absolutely get kicked off those platforms permanently. Every IRC network has had banlists for decades. I knew people who got banned from AIM, Yahoo, ICQ, Livejournal, etc. IP bans were often easy to evade, but the intention was there.
Again: The platform is IRC. The servers are the individual communities. There were hundreds of IRC networks. You were not blacklisted from all of IRC. You were blacklisted from a particular server. And in my personal recollection, you only got banned for something especially egregious, not like today where saying the wrong "trigger word" can get you shadowbanned, which is even more nefarious.
On top of all of this, bans were frequently appealed and overturned.
> Every message board and chatroom (bbs, forums, irc, icq, aol, et all) on the young internet was virtually uncensored and a 100% free for all
But if your definition of "virtually uncensored" is that there are uncensored instances, then IRC, forums, etc. are just as "uncensored" as ever. There's just a lot more internet users on moderated platforms now.
Yes. Advertisement is a helluva drug. No one's IRC server has a billion dollar marketing budget.
Also Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, et all all started off pretty uncensored and unmoderated to build the moats. Then they started cracking down once the feds and political influences kicked in.
Kicking people off was and still is censorship and moderation. Services really try hard to not kick people off now and just police the content instead.