I remember I read something similar in Walter Isaacson's "The Innovators" book. When the internet was just starting, Tim Berners-Lee was faced with the decision

I remember I read something similar in Walter Isaacson's "The Innovators" book. When the internet was just starting, Tim Berners-Lee was faced with the decision of made linking "public" or "private". So basically they considered for a while that an <a> tag should be somehow "authorized" in order to exist. Of course this didn't roll out (thankfully). Sorry if something is not 100% right, it's what I remember.