False proposition. The voice of the individual was also drowned out in early 1990s and 2000s internet - the majority of the web belonged to corporate entities, which did not even stoop down so much as to put a comment form under the articles they were publishing or contact form or email in their about pages.

1990s and 2000s internet were extension of the old world in which the people were voiceless takers who were labeled 'consumers' and whose job was to buy whatever the dominant corporate cartels were selling. So much that even a corporation asking rare feedback from its customers, or gasp responding to feedback or complaints, ever, was major and people would talk about it and spread it through word of mouth: "You hear, bigCorpX actually cares for its customers". Of course they didn't care a zit about the customers - its just that sometimes it was necessary to pretend to appease regulators.

In that corporate internet, the voice of the individual he speaks of was limited to the fringe corners of online forums. Launched by vbulletin, phpBB and the variety. You would find people there, do back and forth and actually be able to express your opinion which you could never express anywhere on internet, and you would feel like you were interacting with the internet.

Even Open Source was still a fringe world, living in the corners of Internet and tech which was still dominated by proprietary giants under the tradition that was inherited from early 1980s and 90s. You could never imagine that Open Source would be the basis of almost everything like it is now, if you were participating in it back in early 2000s. It was a fringe world, and we were fringe people, dabbling in our pursuits in the corners of the internet left to us by the gigantic, traditional corporations.

Today its the opposite.

People decide the agenda. If people think something about a corporation, the corporation ends up having to act, leave aside 'caring'. Even further, there's this new 'community' thing, in which corporations start describing themselves and their customers/users as an 'ecosystem', and start incorporating them into their processes. Its new, but it shows how much the internet has become.

Creating communities, making people talk to each other, something which required sufficient technical knowledge, patience, and sufficient monthly disposable income to dump on creating and maintaining an online forum with something like vbulletin or phpBB is done by just creating a Facebook group or any other social network group.

By publishing in places like Medium, Quora, even Facebook or Twitter, your voice can reach millions of people online, instead of reaching the few dozen people who were regulars of the particular subforum of that online forum you frequented.

People can just start any type of online business, and make a decent living, from writing in online publications to making videos to podcasts to creating and selling software, SaaS services, even just writing about technical matters. Back in the day he speaks of, internet was a hobby which you did after work hours at your home, for 1-2 hours.

...

So no. He is factually wrong, and his approach seems to be just based on nostalgia for a 'better' time, which was not 'better' at all.