Hacking was aggressively criminalized. We lost Aaron Swartz. There are real threats to people with curiosity these days, and that seems to be an intentional result of the laws and enforcement in the US.
In my personal observation, a lot of what spoiled the zany fun of using technology for rule breaking was the rise of really evil large tech companies. It kind of took the mirth out of it because their evil willingness to do anything to Hoover up more data is always sitting there in the background.
