{
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  "description": "Curated online spaces feel like relief—but hand-picking who gets in is still gatekeeping, just with a human face.",
  "path": "/bubbles-and-gatekeeping/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-08T13:56:46.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:y4mvqqxmjy6biftl5tzlnwuh/site.standard.publication/3mmc72c4y2cka",
  "tags": [
    "Algorithmic Feeds",
    "Content Discovery",
    "Content Filtering",
    "Digital Gatekeeping",
    "digitalcuration",
    "Filter Bubbles",
    "filterbubbles",
    "Information Access"
  ],
  "textContent": "NOTE: This post is publishing while I am away in Bequia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, where the X-T5 is getting its first proper outing. Posts this week were scheduled in advance. I can understand the appeal of “Bubbles” as described in Kiko’s post. A circle of “trusted” voices feels like a reasonable alternative to algorithmic sludge. But there’s a word for deciding who gets in and what gets through: gatekeeping. Calling it curation doesn’t change the mechanism—it just puts a human face on it. You can see the hand doing it. For some, that’s genuinely better than an opaque algorithm. It’s still a choice of gatekeeper, not an escape from one. It doesn’t make it neutral. It’s also not new. RSS has enabled this for years. I subscribe to what I want, drop what I don’t, and own the list entirely. No algorithm, no admission committee, no one deciding my taste for me. It’s self-directed in a way most “curated communities” never are. The difference is that RSS doesn’t come with a narrative about saving the web. Which points to the deeper issue: the word curation is doing too much work. It now stretches from personal filtering to editorial control to platform-level selection. When a word covers that much ground, it stops clarifying. It starts obscuring. It becomes cover—for taste enforcement, for exclusion, for the same dynamics already present in the systems people claim to be escaping. The harder questions still go unasked: Who sets the criteria? How do unfamiliar voices enter? What happens when the curators stop being challenged? Without clear answers, “better curation” is just gatekeeping with a warmer aesthetic. That doesn’t make it useless. Smaller, intentional spaces can be valuable. But they’re not an alternative model of the web. They’re enclaves—useful, limited, and only honest when named plainly. We haven’t moved beyond gatekeeping. We’ve just chosen gatekeepers we agree with. Also posted on IndieNews",
  "title": "Bubbles and Gatekeeping",
  "updatedAt": "2026-05-02T18:28:11.000Z"
}