In defense of gatekeeping

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 00:15:00 +0000

Every time I read some politician somewhere is trying to pass some ID verification bill or some other stupid online speech law I got more and more convinced that the internet was mistake.

Better (worse). The accessible internet was mistake. It is an elitist argument, I won’t deny, but unfortunately all these stupid regulations on online activities and even in our own devices (hello, Chat Control) is because our interaction with technology got too mainstream. If a 4 years old child and a 90 and something years old greatgreatmother is able to easily access the same content, the same websites from the same class of devices looks obvious shit is bound to happen when people with different goals, moral and backgrounds are going to interact in the “world wide web”.

When computers got small and affordable enough to put in our homes, only a handful of nerds were able to use them. They (the computers) were difficult to handle, you needed to know commands, you needed to understand how the machine worked. Almost nothing was automated, no shine buttons on a touchscreen to tap. Because of these natural barriers, the average computer user was very technical, very knowleadgable and, on top, eager to learn more. Then, the first home internet connections arrived, bringing low speeds and high prices. People naturally aggregate around BBSs, Usenet and other types of primordials communities, using terminal or other types or archaic interfaces.

It was not approachable for the average person, that needed to learn specific jargons and read long manuals. Nobody had time to that, except a bunch of nerds.

Then computers got even smaller, cheaper and we got broadband speeds. Smartphones were born. Seeing the future laying ahead, a lot of companies jumped in to have an online presence. E-commerce websites appeared, banks started their own web portals, newspapers posted articles, and government made public services available online. A bunch of people rushed in, spreading out the average internet and computer user demographic: less interested in the technology itself and only interested in a specific goal, let’s say buy something online or make a bank transaction. The technology was just the medium, not something to play with. The end goal was more important.

At this point, using the internet became mandatory to have a modern life (we live in a society…). Ok, it brought convenience, more services, time savings and if all of these make my family to lose less time doing what they need to do to live in a society (we really do live…), all power to it. I won’t be the one begging to return back to paper stamps for daily bureaucracies (I have a personal hate against notaries). BUT, the average person was kind of forced to navigate the dreaded internet sea, surrounded by pirates (the bad ones), maritime scammers, ad-mines and other monsters from the abyss. The communities that grew around a common and shared culture, where every one were able to take care of their own safety were stomped by this new crowd. The new internet users didn’t know a fucking thing about the internet itself.

Imagine the average (median, to be exact) person. Half of them is worse. Grab one by them by the neck and drop inside a noisy room with many groups having so diverging conversations. Maybe one group is having a diarrhea of curse words, other is saying stupid but shocking opinions, the cool guys are making offensive jokes, and others are making cat memes. The new guy will be shocked and spooked. “How this lawless cybersea even exist? Is there nobody to take care of this?”, is what they gonna think. And, look, I used “bad” examples here. Your community could be as inoffensive as to discuss, I don’t know, cardboard boxes. The culture around your community implicitly understand to never discuss plastic boxes. So the average person that likes plastic boxes arrives, starts discussing plastic boxes, get offended when somebody from the community rebutes, but instead of moving and creating a new community, s/he insists in call friends to overwhelm the previous community. Fights ensue, the old members, disgusted by the new change leaves, the new ones take place and change the community name to “All packaging boxes”. If you look at very basics, what happened was simple: there was a sense of entitlement. Entitlement. To be supposedly given the right to mold other people communities and culture into theirs.

Instead of looking away. Instead of finding their own niche.

gatekeeping on ThoughtCrime

In defense of gatekeeping