It's far worse, back then stuff just rendered a bit weird and looked crappy but for the most part would still actually work (outside of corporate intranets jscript and other M$ only tech was not as widespread on the open web ). The difference is in the message "best viewed" vs "not compatible" vs "infinite captcha loop with americanisms" vs "not available in your country".

Now it's really common for stuff just to straight up not work or you are actively blocked and considered collateral in protection against spam and botnets, the latter is an entirely new phenomenon.