Who said the site put up barriers? I think you have a valid general question (and you'll note I said "appropriate kind, IMHO" at the top of the original commen

Who said the site put up barriers? I think you have a valid general question (and you'll note I said "appropriate kind, IMHO" at the top of the original comment, acknowledging others might disagree that it was appropriate), but I'd like to contrast two distinct situations: * A collegial forum, where people might go to share information, sometimes with discretion about what can and can't be said (or just comfort levels). * A large corporation that was profiting off of illegal businesses (e.g., contract-violating, IP-violating, defrauding buyers, possibly fencing), and we wanted to gather evidence of that on behalf of some of the harmed parties, to try to stop it. And we did that in a technologically gentle, non-disruptive way. And (as I mentioned in the original comment) we had a conscious policy to immediately cease if we were ever told to.