Then: Don’t trust everything you read on the internet, and Wikipedia isn’t legitimate because anyone can edit it
Now: Some loud moron on Youtube told me a thing and I believe it 100%.
Then: people on the internet were mostly technically adept and creating webpages because they enjoyed them.
Now: people on the internet are mostly ad tech attention economy scams and creating LLM spam blogs for PPC revenue.
It’s just easier now for a conspiracy loon to find something that matches their preconceived biases.