It was a serious issue back then. People were wandering around on the Internet with root accounts. A lot of #linux IRC channels were kicking&banning anyone with “~root” or “root” ident with educational sentence like “Do not use root account as your ordinary account, check instructions”. We don’t see the issue widespread today since distros did very good intended “dark patterns” to push users to regular user accounts. Linux (or UNIX) “root” account is true god mode. E.g. infamous “rm” as root joke (!) could even affect Windows running WSL2, so MS had to implement special workarounds.

What was ambassador doing with Hezbollah exclusive pager?