Depending on the context they might be right. Like, the internet of the mid and late 2010's was pretty much better than today and we'll never go back to that peak.
It's funny you say that, cause many people my age feel the same way about the internet of the early-mid 2000s, the wild west days of the internet. We always remember the things of our youth more fondly.
Eh, certainly a lot of big sites are shitting their pants right now, but I don't think the internet as a whole is doing that bad. It's really the consolidation of internet communities in the 2010s that lead us to this point, now we've learned a hard lesson. Even as things fall apart, FOSS thrives in their wake. We're in a pretty sucky transition period, but I think the internet will be fine in the long run.
specific things in past eras have definitely been better, though oftentimes only in specific places.
a big one that's relevant nowadays is how up until after ww2 we just straight up built better cities. the USA used to have like the worlds most impressive public transport network and cities were universally so lively that modern NYC would look bleak to them.
But obviously they also had rackety as hell trams that would have fallen apart if they went speeds we would now consider hilariously slow, so like obviously the ideal is to take the parts of the past that were better and combine them with the nice things we have nowadays.
Like if i could go back to medieval times with modern medicine and a copy of the communist manifesto that'd be pretty sweet.