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Anyone can set up a blog and write whatever craziness they’d like just like you can with a pen or notebook. But no one is entitled to unlimited reach, and that was the case before personal computers came along.

No newspaper has published every single letter anyone sends to the editor without using some discretion.

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This unlimited reach was kinda possible with all the printing technology, and such things as zine.

But the main point is that it's the newspaper's own editor, following the newspaper's own editorial line (and possibly the law)

Zines have really small reach compared to the app store and Twitter, and yet still also have editorial direction. You can't just send in any ol' thinkpiece and expect to get it published; it will need to resonate with their sensibilities.

The fact of the matter is that everything is gatekept. If you want something done right (as in, not subject to someone else's rules), do it yourself, and you'll find you too will gatekeep after you've spent the considerable effort required to build your own device/OS/appstore ecosystem and social media service, and then someone comes along and tries to tell you how you should run things.

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