Yes, except this exact sentiment, I believe, is part of why we now have the internet we have.

The "old internet" was inaccessible unless you were an expert, true. The experts could have seen this as a chance to make everyone into an expert and teach the values that were important to them in the process. If all the talk about the internet as a democratising force and a tool for freedom of expression is taken seriously, this would have been the way forward.

Instead, experts chose to be elitist and decided to use the information asymmetry to offset themselves from "the masses" and exploit it for monetary gain. The result is that we now have a wealth of powerful, free but arcane and hard to use tools for devs and a locked-down, commercialised and psychologically manipulative web for the rest. What kind of future is that?

I partially disagree because i did that educational thing, though a long time ago. All in all it was mostly a waste of time.

I have an aversion of being called elitist. It's more like resignation, cynicism. Like thinking 'Eat all the shit that you want. Just don't shit on me'

I can understand that not everyone wants or has the time to keep explaining the same things to everyone (though I think there are solutions for that). Also, developers might have other priorities than polishing UX, especially if the software is a volunteer or hobby project. I wouldn't call those things "elitist".

However, what I absolutely believe is elitist is to intentionally design a confusing UX or value it as a "feature" because it will prevent certain groups of people from using the software. That was what the GP advocated for.

In my experience the problem isn't elitism. The problem is large swathes of the human population are lazy luddites.

I see it with cars too. I have friends that love owning fast luxury coupes, and yet don't know how to change their own oil, and can't drive a stick shift. Some of those are guys who build their own PCs, but when it comes to anything mechanical? Nope. Don't even want to learn, and that surprises me.

You can lead horses to water but you can't make them drink, I guess.

Time is finite, and people choose what they are interested in learning. One is not a "Luddite" for not understanding how one's car works if one has a mechanic for that.

So too with software and networks. The internet would never have gotten so big and useful if we demanded every user understand all its subsystems.

It filtered out people with different interests. You do find way more diverse topics out there now in good quality. There are still plenty of forums and sources for technically interested people now - more then before. What also exists are forums and places for everybody else - majority of Internet.

Yeah, and if people want niche ecosystems, they can have niche ecosystems.

They just shouldn't be surprised when organizations that build something that tries to appeal to a mass audience become much, much, to appeal to a mass audience become much, much more relevant to the masses than the niches will ever be.