Geocities had ~1.8M users in Dec 1997. They were often sued for copyright (e.g., here[1]) infringement since then providers were liable. This made it harder for them to raise money, since as copyright holders became more saavy about what companies were doing on the internet, they were increasingly targeting them.
After DMCA when those suits were gone, they raised $$$, became much more valuable, grew, and soon got bought by Yahoo. They went from the 5th most visited to 3rd, even with much more competition. They grew the user base.
The same thing happened to Tripod and Angelfire from that time.
Instead of trying to cherry pick one example, look at all companies before and after. That is the accurate way to see what happened. If you think the safe harbor content protection did not and does not matter, look how hard current companies are pushing to keep Congress from removing such laws.
[1] https://washingtontechnology.com/1996/11/publishers-push-pir...
