"There weren't spam filters in the early Internet, because there wasn't spam on the early Internet."
As someone who administered an email server, I don't think I can even read past this retcon. How can you have been alive then and not remember all the endless spam? People gathered emails everywhere and sent it en masse. After a trip to Japan where I had stayed at hostels, and some required email address, all of the sudden I got a new flood of spam in Japanese