the main one I have seen them say is that "we didn't have net neutrality back in the day and everything was great" when there was throttling and disabling of services that actually triggered NN to be codified as law.

Well the more careful claim it that none of the violations were that bad and definitely not enough to justify regulation across the board, Stratchery sketches out that argument reasonably well.

I think it's broadly true that the internet was not, in fact, a dystopia during those times.