For years, the internet has been shrinking. Not in size, not in data, but in ownership. A vast, decentralized network of personal blogs, forums, and independent communities has been corralled into a handful of paved prison yards controlled by a few massive corporations. Every post, every “friend,” every creative work—
Personally, I prefer an intellectual barrier to entry. It’s one of the things that made the internet of the early days so much better than today.
Everybody who says this assumes they wouldn’t have been barred from entry were they to try and get in now.
I was speaking more to the early days of the internet. You had to be relatively smart, and determined to get on it.
I’ll never forget when the AOLers started showing up.