[GreenDolphinSys]

I'm not describing just the internet. I'm describing the nature of the world around us, both in meatspace and on in the internet in the context of this discussion. As regrettable as it is (I mean, who doesn't hate politicians?), it's just all politics, regardless if one chooses to detach or not.

That pseudonymity you're describing still exists in many spaces to this day. I have no idea what many (most?) of the contributors on F/OSS projects look like, or anything about them unless they voluntarily divulged it. You don't have to "pledge allegiance to political frameworks", not for any F/OSS project that I'm aware of.

What people do have to do more now is treat other people with respect, which the old internet very much did not do well. There are many people who can code, so projects actually don't have to keep around people who can't conduct themselves nicely.

"When you demand these spaces become ..."

"Demand" is a strawman argument. What changed overall is that people bring themselves into these spaces, not just a pseudonymous username. That comes with different expectations for conduct. Do you miss the flamewars of the past?

"where I didn't have to prove I belonged"

What F/OSS projects do you have to do this for? Basically every project I've contributed to had nothing like that.

"... there used to be spaces where we could focus on intellectual puzzles and technical problems without importing every societal conflict"

While I can empathize with this, I'm not sure if I entirely agree with this recollection of the internet. People could still be cruel to anyone who happened to reveal anything about themselves, as humans tend to do, that was "atypical", shall we say. I don't see why you still can't focus on technical problems, because unless you're a moderator, nobody is forcing you to comment on anything except technical discussions.