Has the black-SEO changed since 2010s?

Remember the Scrapebox's times? Thousands of links (comments on blog posts with another thousands of comments on it) pointing directly to the money site; many purchases and sales of microniches making some money since the first month of live; oh, and the ******** links, which you could find even on the most important forums of your contry ... and what about the PR (PageRank), just a few links and the only thing you had to do was sit down and wait for the next PR update. Crazy times.

And I think now it is all fucked up. Maybe I am getting a little melancholic here, but since I came back after a few years disconnected from this world, I feel that a lot of things have changed. What do you thing about the evolution of the black-hat SEO since the 2010s?

Edit: even the word do foll ow is censored now?

Well, obviously things have changed from 2010. Did you expect it to be the same? As with anything, we just need to evolve with the changes.

The game definitely changed, especially the last few years IMHO.

Then again, it's not all bad. SEO has gotten a bit harder but there are other opportunities now like social media and stuff.

I remember the Florida update, those were very dark times at least now we're all used to updates and the learning process to figure out what works and what doesn't is collectively far quicker than ever before.

Yes, SEO as a whole has changed. It needs more effort now especially at the tier 1. And you need to be ahead of the competition in order to grow. The basics are still the same though. You need to evolve with time now and be a bit discreet too if needed. Spam has reduced overall which is not a bad thing. Quality is more important now rather than quantity.