While at first glance LLMs do help expose and even circumvent gatekeeping, often it turns out that gatekeeping might have been there for a reason.

We have always relied on superficial cues to tell us about some deeper quality (good faith, willingness to comply with code of conduct, and so on). This is useful and is a necessary shortcut, as if we had to assess everyone and everything from first principles every time things would grind to a halt. Once a cue becomes unviable, the “gate” is not eliminated (except if briefly); the cue is just replaced with something else that is more difficult to circumvent.

I think that brief time after Internet enabled global communication and before LLMs devalued communication signals was pretty cool; now it seems like there’s more and more closed, private or paid communities.

Really? You think LLMs are a bigger shift in how internet communities are than big corporations like Google, Facebook etc.? I personally see much less change last few years than I did 15 years ago.