> It was always about money, and it always will be about money.

There were people like that in the old days (TJ Rogers, Larry Ellison) but also a lot of hippie-influenced folks with an idealistic world view. People literally talked about making the world a better place without irony.

But when the .com boom appeared people flooded here for the money and, since it appeared "make the world better" was one of the things people said, it was cargo-culted widely ("we're making the world a better place by allowing advertisers to reach audiences they were previously excluded from").

Fortunately the density of idealists is higher in SV and density of narcissists higher in SF. But yes, the quality has gone down.

I'm sure those people existed, but money and power is money and power and influences everything as it always does.