The worst thing was the cp, for sure.

Yahoo used to have these nsfw "clubs" where people shared porn and bizarrely enough there was even cp in a few of them.

I always thought the relative lack of people sucked back then.

Now I kinda wish it didn't have as many.

The vitriol was more or less the same as it is now, though. It really was dependent on the spaces you hung out, and if they were actively moderated and had rules against such crap. All but one of the spaces I would spend online would have dropped the ban hammer on someone telling someone else to kill themselves or for using a slur/spouting hate speech.

But it was also easier to find spaces where that kind of talk was encouraged, too.

Hand-curated categories -> lists etc.

Think back to what Yahoo originally was. Drill down through categories, subcats, etc. to find what you're looking for.

Worked for the time, but for a technical query today would be an absolute non-starter