Dissolution of Anonymity
Posted: Sun May 17, 2026 10:07 pm
Alright.. this was originally posted in the bullshit section of the website, but honestly it was way too long to be there and didnt fit with the theme of that section being more of a blog. I also kinda want to come back to this sometime and maybe make a couple edits, or add some additional formatting to make it easier to read, and the forum just seems like the right place.
This shit you're about to read is the result of a saturday with not enough food, plenty of coffee, and an excessive amount of nicotine. Strap in boys, wall of text to follow.
Dissolution of Anonymity
I remember when I was first getting online in the late 90's I was always told not to share any personal information online. Boy, how things have changed.
It seems like we were all slowly conditioned to think there was no risk in sharing personal information, that doing so would be convenient for us, and allow us access to more services, and protect us from dangerous text and images. While that may be true, that is only one side of the coin.
You see, we used to be worried about identity fraud, or some malicious individual hacking our pc. Don't get me wrong, these are legitimate things to consider, but these are not the issues affecting most of the people using the internet today. What i'm going to attempt to convey, is how we were all manipulated into sacrificing our privacy for essentially nothing, and how governments and big tech corporations work hand-in-glove to reduce our ability to use the internet anonymously, and why.
First, some basic facts:
-If you are not paying with money, you are paying with data (you are the product, your data is sold and they dont even cut you a cheque!)
-Governments do not want to protect your privacy (remember, the USA tried to outlaw encryption for private citizens; Five Eyes; the Patriot Act; mandatory age verification; etc. They want to know what their 'assets' are up to)
-Internet freedom has declined globally for 15 consecutive years (Freedom of the Net report 2025 - https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/ ... 120525.pdf)
It's my opinion that all people should be permitted to access and disseminate information anonymously. I place a high value on my right to privacy and this is something I idealistically believe in. I will not trade my liberties for securities. I do not believe it benefits me for my government to know all my activities online. If that means they also do not know my countrymens activities online and i'm in some way at greater risk because of that, I accept that risk. We cannot allow dragnet-style mass surveillance systems to be implemented piece by piece. Once the systems are in place, it's only a matter of time and circumstance until they are overtly misused in the name of "emergency measures", or "security". We are already too close to this point, it's just not overt yet.
Before I get into the weeds of it, let me add some context to my viewpoint.
-I live in Canada, a beautiful and peaceful country. My opinion and my reasoning come from the North American perspective, most western nations will have similar perspectives I think, but i'm speaking as a Canadian when referencing rights and freedoms, though I wish for all people to have these same rights and freedoms
-Our right to privacy and our right to freedom of expression exist to protect us from government overreach. The men who wrote the canadian charter of rights and freedoms did not want future governments to have mass-surveillance capabilities, and this was enacted during the cold war. I realize we have no entitlement to these rights in private places, or on private platforms, but then the governments should not be able to compel private companies to hand over our information without a court ordered warrant, and doing so without a warrant should be illegal.
-I reserve no trust for unknown future governments. That trust will need to be earned. I do not want to allow the creation of an apparatus that can be used to build profiles on private citizens
-Democracy is strongest when people are engaged with it. When the average person checks-out, the big corporations, mega-rich individuals and politicians control the country. When's the last time you wrote a letter to your member of parliament?
Now, let me talk a bit about the 1990's internet. When people using their real names online were the outliers, and usually doing it as it pertained to their profession or serious hobby that they were already known for. Back then, the internet was all about people being able to access information from anywhere, freely. It was common for regular people to publish their own websites, and for those sites to contain any information or views the webmaster wanted, this of course had both positive and negative results, but thats freedom. The internet was much more diverse, you did not spend most your internet time on the same five websites, and people were always exploring the web and coming across new web pages and new, unfiltered, information. There were no geo-blocks. There was rarely moderation. Governments did not have an easy way to profile people based upon their web activity. People didnt worry that their online activities were being tracked, and people knew their privacy was in their own hands and therefor acted accordingly. If you wanted information on a particular subject, you would likely find it from an individual that was invested in that subject and was sharing the information out of passion for the subject.
I am not proposing we go back to the 1990's internet. I am simply offering context so that you will see how far things have strayed, and how they've strayed in the wrong direction. The 1990's were not some idyllic perfect era for privacy, it was people still had to stand up and fight for it. The creator of PGP ("Pretty Good Privacy" - a tool for encryption) was criminally charged by the US government in 1993 for releasing his cryptographic tool to the world. He had enabled private citizens to communicate privately and the US tried to frame that as illegal. In 1995 he released the source code for PGP in a book, which allowed to absolute protection under the united states first amendment. The charges were officially dropped in 1996. In 1997 the united states had a bipartisan panel debating the Security and Freedom through Encryption (SAFE) Act, an act written to legislate the use and export of encryption tools. During this debate former FBI agent (republican) Mike Oxley made the argument that "The FBI won�t be able to catch 'the bad guys', if we don't allow them easy access to all coded messages". Which is akin to saying, you cannot be protected if you have a right to communicate privately. You can see how it's always liberty vs security in these arguments, recognize this, this is the main tactic used by those who want to reduce your rights. Basic fear mongering. That was the first crypto war
In practice, really, encryption was never widely adopted by the average person, but the right to use it had been established. This is important as it helps set precedent that we have the right to private communications. There are places in the world where these rights are not enjoyed, and i assure you the people there would love to have these protections from government overreach. Rights and freedoms are hard-won, and require constant defense to remain solid. We cannot let them be nickel and dimed away from us. We must be vigilant in our defense of our rights, even if it costs us security, as precedence is an important part of our legal framework. Never let the risks of today, cost you your rights for tomorrow, for you do not know what tomorrow holds.
Once we moved into the 2000's, the internet started to enter web 2.0. Let's not worry about the specific date, but let me illustrate some differences:
-The ability to interact more with existing websites (comment boxes at the bottom of many webpages/blogs).
-The birth of modern social media websites (myspace, youtube, reddit, facebook, etc.)
-Aggregation and sorting of internet content by using tags or keywords
-Greatly increasing access to the internet, on more than just peoples home PC's and with quickly increasing bandwidth capabilities
The result of these (and many other) changes were many. How people interacted with the internet was changing quickly. Things were moving from individuals publishing their own content, to individuals posting content to business's websites/platforms. This is important as it's a key factor in how we got where we are today. When people were publishing their own content, they were owning their own space, they were not subject to any moderation from a company that had an agenda, or political affiliations, or shareholders to please. They were simply in control. This change from people creating their own platforms to people using big platforms provided to them led to the financial influence on moderation of content. You see youtube slop today because people are profiting off it. You see regurgitated, low value blog posts rank high in search results because the writers and SEO companies are profiting from it. You see AI written bullshit (which is, at best, information stolen from already existing sources) everywhere because people profit off it. The result of this is that the people publishing content out of ideal or passion are pushed so far down that you will struggle to find them, and that's assuming you're even trying.
We also had the tragedy of 9/11. I still remember the day vividly, and my heart goes out to all those affected by that terrible event. 2,996 people died that day, let us not forget. That was an inflection point that changed the course of history, and ties into all of this (mainly) due to the Patriot Act. The narrative was that terrorists hated our freedoms and were attacking us for it, but in the end, it was our governments that reduced our freedoms, and the patriot act never resulted in preventing a terrorist attack. This is another example of a government trying to frame rights and freedoms as opposed to their citizen's security. This was an era of normalizing mass surveillance in the name of protecting average citizens. If you were a espousing islamic beliefs online during this time, you were being watched and possibly spied on, regardless of whether you were a criminal. Is this freedom of expression and religion?
The 2000's rise of social media and online shopping helped usher in a new era of online identities, ones linked to people real names. It happened slowly at the time, but quickly in retrospect. People were willingly associating more and more of their activities online with their true identities. This is especially notable as with this change, the large companies controlling the biggest websites started to realize that advertising could be sold for a much higher cost if it was targeted at specific demographics, and that our data and metadata held value (and that we were willing to hand it over for free!). It was in the year 2000 when google adwords was created, though in the early days it was not yet centered around the collection of mass amounts of user-specific data, but rather linked to search queries (if you were searching "coffee maker with timer", you may see a banner ad for a coffee maker. It was not yet based on an advertising profile linked to you personally, but displayed based on your current search query). By 2005, online advertising was a multi-billion dollar industry (for context, the first clickable banner ad was in 1997), with google as the top dog. That money was made before they necessarily knew your true identity, just what you were searching for on their own website. In 2007, facebook launched it's own advertising platform, which revolutionized online advertising by targeting ads at users based on age, location, interests and even online behaviours. Now you can start to see how we got where we are.
By the end of the 2000's, governments had enacted legislation that allowed them to compel tech and telecom companies to hand over users private information (although many times the companies would willingly do it, without the need for a warrant or court-order). Remember, if your data exists on their servers (their physical infrastructure), then they own it, and can do what they please with it, whether that means sell it off to the highest bidder, or hand it over to the government upon request. And we also had companies with increasing financial incentive to collect as much data and metadata on their users as possible. The hand enters the glove.
I could probably just stop writing here, as you can clearly see how potential for surviellance and potential for revenue compliment each other regarding the internet and the reduction of online anonymity. But i'm a verbose motherfucker, so i will continue at least a bit more.
Now for the 2010's, I'll try to keep this part short, as it alot more of the same vein, but i'll at least lay out some of the important changes that took place.
-Smartphones became predominant
-Ever increasing usage of now-large social media and tech platforms
-Corporations collect as much data on users as legally possible
-Sponsored content starts to become commonplace (ads that look less like ads, and more like content)
-Rise of algorithms to determine the content we are shown
-Edward Snowden blows the whistle on the US governments mass surveillance of it's citizens
The 2010's saw some notable changes, it was no longer just businesses and the younger generations using social media, your parents probably created their facebook accounts in the 2010's. Adoption was widespread and the platforms were raking in the dough because of it. Over the course of the decade all major social media platforms adopted algorithmic feeds, abandoning the previous chronological, subscriber based feeds. They were now deciding what you saw and in what order. The ads didnt always look like ads, many just looked like content in your feed. At the time, most people really didnt care, there were benefits to the algorithms and people did genuinely enjoy discovering new content outside their existing circle of friends, subscribed channels, related videos, etc. The downsides had not yet been realized by the average internet user, and the average internet user of the 2010's was not the same as the average internet user of the 2000's, let alone the 1990's. The average user, was becoming the average person, or rather, the average person was becoming a regular internet user. People were now connected all the time, with copious amounts of personal data being handed to companies on a silver platter, and with a side of fries.
Enter the 2020's, the fight for online privacy is now as important as ever. We are seeing a great regression in internet freedom, driven mainly by whats being called 'digital sovereignty', which is essentially fracturing the internet in territorial zones that can be controlled by governments. Some places are criminalizing online anonymity, we have AI-based automated censorship in other areas, and around the world governments are increasingly trying to put restrictions on how the internets used by their citizens. Even the liberal democracies are pushing for mandated age-verification at the device-level. Which mean that although you purchased a device and you own it, what you can do with it will be restricted unless you upload your government ID, binding the device, and all activities it's used for, to your identity. For example, the UK's Online Safety Act contains provisions that require people to submit sufficient ID, or even worse, facial scans, to access what the government defines as 'harmful content'. This is especially risky as the definition of what a government deems harmful content can change over time, and we dont need this framework in place. But, even today we can already see examples of it being used in situations where many would agree it is unreasonable, such as independant journalists websites, public health sites, and LGBTQ+ websites. Do we really need governments as the great moral deciders of our day? And should we not have access to whatever information we please, if only to adequately critique it (if we are so inclined)? Also, if these webpages are considered harmful, or counter to what the government wants it's citizens to see, do we really want our online identities tied to our use of these platforms/webpages? How does this benefit us, to have access to less information?
I really feel we need to start taking a stand against this overreach. We need to value our rights to privacy, freedom of expression, and freedom of belief. There is too much money, power, and politics involved at this point to trust our governments and the tech corporations to respect our rights. You may wonder why the tech and telecom companies willingly would hand over user data to governments without a subpeona or court order. You may think this would be bad for business, hell, I would think this would be bad for business, but evidently it's not. These companies want favour with our governments. They want preferential treatment. They want their monopolies protected, rather than broken up.
The government has the power to protect our privacy, but doesn't, for three main reasons:
1) As long as the glove fits the hand, and the governments are benefiting from user data collected by these companies, the governments do not need to be the main ones operating the dragnet (which would be illegal). They also do not have to fund it, or store and index the information themselves. The tech companies have already built complex profiles on each of us through the tracking and collection of our data for advertising and algorithm purposes.
2) The tech companies make up a huge proportion of most economies. This is serious money. This is campaign funding, election influencing money. They can get behind the politicians in democratic countries that are most likely to be conducive to their intrusive policies. This is perfectly legal, and actually how democracy was designed to work. The problem is that the average person is not engaging with their democracy or dropping the platforms that invade their privacy.
3) Algorithms have the capability to influence elections. Our viewpoints, political or otherwise, are only formed based upon the information we consume. When the average person consumes so much media online, this is significant.
We have built the perfect framework for governments, mega-corporations, and ultra-rich to control our society, and in many ways they already do, but things could always be worse and we must remember that. With this framework in place, what would happen if the wrong people were handed the keys to the government?
"If you build it, they will come"
This shit you're about to read is the result of a saturday with not enough food, plenty of coffee, and an excessive amount of nicotine. Strap in boys, wall of text to follow.
Dissolution of Anonymity
I remember when I was first getting online in the late 90's I was always told not to share any personal information online. Boy, how things have changed.
It seems like we were all slowly conditioned to think there was no risk in sharing personal information, that doing so would be convenient for us, and allow us access to more services, and protect us from dangerous text and images. While that may be true, that is only one side of the coin.
You see, we used to be worried about identity fraud, or some malicious individual hacking our pc. Don't get me wrong, these are legitimate things to consider, but these are not the issues affecting most of the people using the internet today. What i'm going to attempt to convey, is how we were all manipulated into sacrificing our privacy for essentially nothing, and how governments and big tech corporations work hand-in-glove to reduce our ability to use the internet anonymously, and why.
First, some basic facts:
-If you are not paying with money, you are paying with data (you are the product, your data is sold and they dont even cut you a cheque!)
-Governments do not want to protect your privacy (remember, the USA tried to outlaw encryption for private citizens; Five Eyes; the Patriot Act; mandatory age verification; etc. They want to know what their 'assets' are up to)
-Internet freedom has declined globally for 15 consecutive years (Freedom of the Net report 2025 - https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/ ... 120525.pdf)
It's my opinion that all people should be permitted to access and disseminate information anonymously. I place a high value on my right to privacy and this is something I idealistically believe in. I will not trade my liberties for securities. I do not believe it benefits me for my government to know all my activities online. If that means they also do not know my countrymens activities online and i'm in some way at greater risk because of that, I accept that risk. We cannot allow dragnet-style mass surveillance systems to be implemented piece by piece. Once the systems are in place, it's only a matter of time and circumstance until they are overtly misused in the name of "emergency measures", or "security". We are already too close to this point, it's just not overt yet.
Before I get into the weeds of it, let me add some context to my viewpoint.
-I live in Canada, a beautiful and peaceful country. My opinion and my reasoning come from the North American perspective, most western nations will have similar perspectives I think, but i'm speaking as a Canadian when referencing rights and freedoms, though I wish for all people to have these same rights and freedoms
-Our right to privacy and our right to freedom of expression exist to protect us from government overreach. The men who wrote the canadian charter of rights and freedoms did not want future governments to have mass-surveillance capabilities, and this was enacted during the cold war. I realize we have no entitlement to these rights in private places, or on private platforms, but then the governments should not be able to compel private companies to hand over our information without a court ordered warrant, and doing so without a warrant should be illegal.
-I reserve no trust for unknown future governments. That trust will need to be earned. I do not want to allow the creation of an apparatus that can be used to build profiles on private citizens
-Democracy is strongest when people are engaged with it. When the average person checks-out, the big corporations, mega-rich individuals and politicians control the country. When's the last time you wrote a letter to your member of parliament?
Now, let me talk a bit about the 1990's internet. When people using their real names online were the outliers, and usually doing it as it pertained to their profession or serious hobby that they were already known for. Back then, the internet was all about people being able to access information from anywhere, freely. It was common for regular people to publish their own websites, and for those sites to contain any information or views the webmaster wanted, this of course had both positive and negative results, but thats freedom. The internet was much more diverse, you did not spend most your internet time on the same five websites, and people were always exploring the web and coming across new web pages and new, unfiltered, information. There were no geo-blocks. There was rarely moderation. Governments did not have an easy way to profile people based upon their web activity. People didnt worry that their online activities were being tracked, and people knew their privacy was in their own hands and therefor acted accordingly. If you wanted information on a particular subject, you would likely find it from an individual that was invested in that subject and was sharing the information out of passion for the subject.
I am not proposing we go back to the 1990's internet. I am simply offering context so that you will see how far things have strayed, and how they've strayed in the wrong direction. The 1990's were not some idyllic perfect era for privacy, it was people still had to stand up and fight for it. The creator of PGP ("Pretty Good Privacy" - a tool for encryption) was criminally charged by the US government in 1993 for releasing his cryptographic tool to the world. He had enabled private citizens to communicate privately and the US tried to frame that as illegal. In 1995 he released the source code for PGP in a book, which allowed to absolute protection under the united states first amendment. The charges were officially dropped in 1996. In 1997 the united states had a bipartisan panel debating the Security and Freedom through Encryption (SAFE) Act, an act written to legislate the use and export of encryption tools. During this debate former FBI agent (republican) Mike Oxley made the argument that "The FBI won�t be able to catch 'the bad guys', if we don't allow them easy access to all coded messages". Which is akin to saying, you cannot be protected if you have a right to communicate privately. You can see how it's always liberty vs security in these arguments, recognize this, this is the main tactic used by those who want to reduce your rights. Basic fear mongering. That was the first crypto war
In practice, really, encryption was never widely adopted by the average person, but the right to use it had been established. This is important as it helps set precedent that we have the right to private communications. There are places in the world where these rights are not enjoyed, and i assure you the people there would love to have these protections from government overreach. Rights and freedoms are hard-won, and require constant defense to remain solid. We cannot let them be nickel and dimed away from us. We must be vigilant in our defense of our rights, even if it costs us security, as precedence is an important part of our legal framework. Never let the risks of today, cost you your rights for tomorrow, for you do not know what tomorrow holds.
Once we moved into the 2000's, the internet started to enter web 2.0. Let's not worry about the specific date, but let me illustrate some differences:
-The ability to interact more with existing websites (comment boxes at the bottom of many webpages/blogs).
-The birth of modern social media websites (myspace, youtube, reddit, facebook, etc.)
-Aggregation and sorting of internet content by using tags or keywords
-Greatly increasing access to the internet, on more than just peoples home PC's and with quickly increasing bandwidth capabilities
The result of these (and many other) changes were many. How people interacted with the internet was changing quickly. Things were moving from individuals publishing their own content, to individuals posting content to business's websites/platforms. This is important as it's a key factor in how we got where we are today. When people were publishing their own content, they were owning their own space, they were not subject to any moderation from a company that had an agenda, or political affiliations, or shareholders to please. They were simply in control. This change from people creating their own platforms to people using big platforms provided to them led to the financial influence on moderation of content. You see youtube slop today because people are profiting off it. You see regurgitated, low value blog posts rank high in search results because the writers and SEO companies are profiting from it. You see AI written bullshit (which is, at best, information stolen from already existing sources) everywhere because people profit off it. The result of this is that the people publishing content out of ideal or passion are pushed so far down that you will struggle to find them, and that's assuming you're even trying.
We also had the tragedy of 9/11. I still remember the day vividly, and my heart goes out to all those affected by that terrible event. 2,996 people died that day, let us not forget. That was an inflection point that changed the course of history, and ties into all of this (mainly) due to the Patriot Act. The narrative was that terrorists hated our freedoms and were attacking us for it, but in the end, it was our governments that reduced our freedoms, and the patriot act never resulted in preventing a terrorist attack. This is another example of a government trying to frame rights and freedoms as opposed to their citizen's security. This was an era of normalizing mass surveillance in the name of protecting average citizens. If you were a espousing islamic beliefs online during this time, you were being watched and possibly spied on, regardless of whether you were a criminal. Is this freedom of expression and religion?
The 2000's rise of social media and online shopping helped usher in a new era of online identities, ones linked to people real names. It happened slowly at the time, but quickly in retrospect. People were willingly associating more and more of their activities online with their true identities. This is especially notable as with this change, the large companies controlling the biggest websites started to realize that advertising could be sold for a much higher cost if it was targeted at specific demographics, and that our data and metadata held value (and that we were willing to hand it over for free!). It was in the year 2000 when google adwords was created, though in the early days it was not yet centered around the collection of mass amounts of user-specific data, but rather linked to search queries (if you were searching "coffee maker with timer", you may see a banner ad for a coffee maker. It was not yet based on an advertising profile linked to you personally, but displayed based on your current search query). By 2005, online advertising was a multi-billion dollar industry (for context, the first clickable banner ad was in 1997), with google as the top dog. That money was made before they necessarily knew your true identity, just what you were searching for on their own website. In 2007, facebook launched it's own advertising platform, which revolutionized online advertising by targeting ads at users based on age, location, interests and even online behaviours. Now you can start to see how we got where we are.
By the end of the 2000's, governments had enacted legislation that allowed them to compel tech and telecom companies to hand over users private information (although many times the companies would willingly do it, without the need for a warrant or court-order). Remember, if your data exists on their servers (their physical infrastructure), then they own it, and can do what they please with it, whether that means sell it off to the highest bidder, or hand it over to the government upon request. And we also had companies with increasing financial incentive to collect as much data and metadata on their users as possible. The hand enters the glove.
I could probably just stop writing here, as you can clearly see how potential for surviellance and potential for revenue compliment each other regarding the internet and the reduction of online anonymity. But i'm a verbose motherfucker, so i will continue at least a bit more.
Now for the 2010's, I'll try to keep this part short, as it alot more of the same vein, but i'll at least lay out some of the important changes that took place.
-Smartphones became predominant
-Ever increasing usage of now-large social media and tech platforms
-Corporations collect as much data on users as legally possible
-Sponsored content starts to become commonplace (ads that look less like ads, and more like content)
-Rise of algorithms to determine the content we are shown
-Edward Snowden blows the whistle on the US governments mass surveillance of it's citizens
The 2010's saw some notable changes, it was no longer just businesses and the younger generations using social media, your parents probably created their facebook accounts in the 2010's. Adoption was widespread and the platforms were raking in the dough because of it. Over the course of the decade all major social media platforms adopted algorithmic feeds, abandoning the previous chronological, subscriber based feeds. They were now deciding what you saw and in what order. The ads didnt always look like ads, many just looked like content in your feed. At the time, most people really didnt care, there were benefits to the algorithms and people did genuinely enjoy discovering new content outside their existing circle of friends, subscribed channels, related videos, etc. The downsides had not yet been realized by the average internet user, and the average internet user of the 2010's was not the same as the average internet user of the 2000's, let alone the 1990's. The average user, was becoming the average person, or rather, the average person was becoming a regular internet user. People were now connected all the time, with copious amounts of personal data being handed to companies on a silver platter, and with a side of fries.
Enter the 2020's, the fight for online privacy is now as important as ever. We are seeing a great regression in internet freedom, driven mainly by whats being called 'digital sovereignty', which is essentially fracturing the internet in territorial zones that can be controlled by governments. Some places are criminalizing online anonymity, we have AI-based automated censorship in other areas, and around the world governments are increasingly trying to put restrictions on how the internets used by their citizens. Even the liberal democracies are pushing for mandated age-verification at the device-level. Which mean that although you purchased a device and you own it, what you can do with it will be restricted unless you upload your government ID, binding the device, and all activities it's used for, to your identity. For example, the UK's Online Safety Act contains provisions that require people to submit sufficient ID, or even worse, facial scans, to access what the government defines as 'harmful content'. This is especially risky as the definition of what a government deems harmful content can change over time, and we dont need this framework in place. But, even today we can already see examples of it being used in situations where many would agree it is unreasonable, such as independant journalists websites, public health sites, and LGBTQ+ websites. Do we really need governments as the great moral deciders of our day? And should we not have access to whatever information we please, if only to adequately critique it (if we are so inclined)? Also, if these webpages are considered harmful, or counter to what the government wants it's citizens to see, do we really want our online identities tied to our use of these platforms/webpages? How does this benefit us, to have access to less information?
I really feel we need to start taking a stand against this overreach. We need to value our rights to privacy, freedom of expression, and freedom of belief. There is too much money, power, and politics involved at this point to trust our governments and the tech corporations to respect our rights. You may wonder why the tech and telecom companies willingly would hand over user data to governments without a subpeona or court order. You may think this would be bad for business, hell, I would think this would be bad for business, but evidently it's not. These companies want favour with our governments. They want preferential treatment. They want their monopolies protected, rather than broken up.
The government has the power to protect our privacy, but doesn't, for three main reasons:
1) As long as the glove fits the hand, and the governments are benefiting from user data collected by these companies, the governments do not need to be the main ones operating the dragnet (which would be illegal). They also do not have to fund it, or store and index the information themselves. The tech companies have already built complex profiles on each of us through the tracking and collection of our data for advertising and algorithm purposes.
2) The tech companies make up a huge proportion of most economies. This is serious money. This is campaign funding, election influencing money. They can get behind the politicians in democratic countries that are most likely to be conducive to their intrusive policies. This is perfectly legal, and actually how democracy was designed to work. The problem is that the average person is not engaging with their democracy or dropping the platforms that invade their privacy.
3) Algorithms have the capability to influence elections. Our viewpoints, political or otherwise, are only formed based upon the information we consume. When the average person consumes so much media online, this is significant.
We have built the perfect framework for governments, mega-corporations, and ultra-rich to control our society, and in many ways they already do, but things could always be worse and we must remember that. With this framework in place, what would happen if the wrong people were handed the keys to the government?
"If you build it, they will come"