You could post whatever you wanted to Usenet. You could email whatever you wanted to anyone, and they would see it in their inbox. Heck you could “finger” to see who was online in remote networks, and “talk” to open a live chat with anyone, totally unmediated by any commercial product. You could log in to open FTPs and trade files.
We’ve been to that particular heaven, and most people didn’t like it.
Why? While trafficking in CSM was an important and awful consequence, the negative that dominated most people’s experience was spam. That’s why web forums beat Usenet; that’s why centralized webmail beat a forest of naked email servers. Etc.
People don’t actually want unmoderated search; it would be choked with spam.
What people actually want is whatever they want, as easily and cheaply as they can get it. The Pirate Bay and other file sharing services are popular not because they represent some sort of libertarian ideal, but simply because they shovel a lot of great content to people for free.
Of course they’re popular! A person handing out $10 bills on the street corner will be popular too. But it kind of matters where he or she got those $10 bills. There are societal side effects we might want to manage.
