Is gatekeeping the internet a good idea?

Knowledge is power. This phrase has been said by every parent trying to convince their kid to take school seriously. Knowledge has been something that’s been privatized and gate kept for hundreds of years. There was no such thing as the internet until 40 years ago. If you wanted to learn about the history of your country or your people you needed to ask a person, go to the library or attend some sort of an educational institution. This worked in a way because it naturally provided an assurance of the correct usage of knowledge. Whenever a responsible person from the community teaches the youth, they also give them some sort of guidance or disclaimer that comes with it. Before the internet, the transfer of knowledge was regularly accompanied with a guideline to ensure its safe usage, however, the internet removed these guidelines and knowledge became a naked body with no protection.

For example, if a kid from an oppressed community grows up and naturally gets curious about the reason for their oppression they will ask their parent about it. The parent, if they have their child’s best interest in heart, they will explain the history in a way where the kid won’t carry malice in their heart. The knowledge will be accompanied with some sort of a moral guideline. That will ensure the kid does not use this knowledge in a misguided, harmful way whether that is towards themselves or others. This doesn’t only apply to parents, schools make sure they convey the information in a way where students don’t get any wrong ideas. We are taught that Nazis are bad guys but we also know that doesn’t mean we can harass one if we see them in public.

The era of the internet changed all of this. For the most part, parents and the educational institutions are still providing that moral guidance accompanied with knowledge. However, the internet brought something to the world that never existed. Information about anything can be accessed by anyone at anytime. Do we really want a psychopath to watch a video on YouTube titled “ how to be charismatic”? Think of all of the posts you have seen on social media that was clearly blatant misinformation. Some people that spread misinformation mean no harm. They are just people who don’t care enough to do reliable research. Many YouTubers would create videos about topics that are “backed” by journal articles. If you read these articles they are often not peer-reviewed, outdated, or reach conclusions that are different from the YouTube videos’ conclusions. As a viewer, you don’t have the time to fact-check every “educational” video you watch. You take it with face value. “But I’m different, I take everything I watch with a grain of salt, unless I know the sources are reliable”. We all say that but you got to remember that as humans we tend to have established biases. Most of the time we don’t actually take things with a grain of salt, if we FEEL like its the truth, we take it as the truth even if we don’t know it. Think about what all this does to the general public in the long-term.

You might think I am attempting to suggest that there should be some type of a gatekeeper of the internet but that is also not wise. There are far too many advantages of the internet being as open as it is that so much will be lost. Take a moment to reflect on Wikipedia as an example. It is an incredible powerful source of information. There is a page about anything and can be easily found. Although there are many pages that are not credible, we can’t ignore all the days it came in clutch to provide quick and accessible information. Anyway, I wrote all this just to point out the hiding danger of the Internet.