For the most part, yes. That “joke” is a couple decades out of date. (And even then, it was basically just bleeding edge hardware that only barely worked under windows anyway, or highly proprietary hardware that you wouldn’t have chosen to buy if you had a choice.)

From what I’ve seen/heard so far, most folks if they don’t know the party on the other end will start fairly slow, and each response will be a little faster than the previous until one party or the other stops accelerating, or there is interference and they have to request a retransmission. But if they know each other, they’ll just start at whatever speed they are mutually comfortable at.

There are also a whole pile of three letter shorthands called Q-Codes. They act as meta or control instructions, and speed adjustments are one of the universal uses. They function in both a question and statement mode, and often have madlibs style fill in the blanks. Eg:

QRQ? Shall I go faster? QRQ40 Go faster, up to 40 words per minute.

QRS20 Go Slower, 20 words per minute max

QOD12? Can you communicate in English or French? QOD073 I can communicate in Dutch, Norwegian, or German.

QRE KRST? What is your estimated time of arrival at/over KRST? QRE KRST 0945 I will arrive at/over Rochester Intl. Airport at 9:45a UTC

There’s a pretty thorough list in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_code

Wait… what? I’m studying for my Technician license right now and it’s still in the guidebook supposedly last updated in 2020.