How quaint! I never knew he had one but I do remember there being loads of ISPs out there at the time, and in-fact my first internet connection was aimed primarily at kids and you had to use the special browser to dial in but were locked to only using that service.
It's funny we're now re-experiencing this AOL-like lock-in with Facebook and other modern sites.
I can't tell if the highly voted posts with racist/xenophobic/black-and-white content are on the rise or I've suddenly became sensitive to them, it's so annoying knowing I can't say anything without being buried aswell. Or are you just using Reddit as a synonym for stress?
Hasn't been true since the Web took over the world. The Internet ecosystem we have isn't at all like the one we had when John Gilmore said that. And, from all the people who talk about the Internet not being wild west anymore as if that were in any sense a good thing, I get the impression a goodly chunk of the population wants it that way.