It was technically obscure, impenetrable, populated by geeks and wizards, loners, misfits”; but it “became a place where people could talk to other people without constraint. Without filters or censorship or official sanction—and perhaps most significantly, without advertising….The attraction was in speech, however mediated. In people talking, however slowly. And mostly, the attraction lay in the kinds of things they were saying. Never in history had so many had the chance to know what so many others were thinking on such a wide range of subjects.”

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, loc. 906