Nah, the good ol’ days were when websites provided value to their users. The only competitively sustainable business model is the reverse: where users provide value to the website owners.

You know what you didn’t mention? Security. Privacy. Authenticity.

a clean and functional site

But the specs no longer call for a clean, functional site. Today’s “professional” web development specs call for user tracking, customized content per user per platform per locality the page is being served to. Then there’s the backend dashboard services showing the overlords user behavior patterns and how they change based on tweaks made to their ui, I wouldn’t be surprised if the algorithms auto-tune presentation to optimize behavior.