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There was an album by the Dead Kennedys called "Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death!"--an homage to the Patrick Henry battle cry--and I often recall its sentiments while reading HN comments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_me_liberty_or_give_me_dea...!

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I love that DK album! However, I think the comments here are more of the Patrick Henry "give me liberty" sentiment than the Dead Kennedys "give me convenience" one. The Internet has been on a trajectory of increased centralization, login walls, and removal of anonymity, even for read-only content. That is driven by companies protecting their competitive advantage of decades-old UGC that exists on their platform from scrapers and AI companies, which is their right, but it definitely is corrosive to the spirit of the (old) Internet, and of the publicly indexable forums that inspired Reddit. Information wants to be free.

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