I haven’t stumbled upon much sketchy stuff, you’d need to know where it is and discovery is still fairly manual though indexing services exist. Of course you need to find those services in the first place…

Anonymity is more of a focus than 90s internet, so it’s hard to tell who anyone really is but you’re probably right. There are active Russian and Iranian dissident text forums though.

However, for me, it’s the people just hosting personal websites e.g., a darkwave radio site, or a cryptography blog. Obviously the barrier to entry means it leans fairly techy.