[jerome-jh]

Make me thinking of the old saying: "First they jailed X, Y, Z and that was OK. Finally they jailed me". Censorship is an extension of both the search bubble and closed platforms. Contact tracing is an extension of the wide spread address book stealing by apps, to which many people (including intelligent ones) seem to have agreed to.

The open web is dying, sure, but this an agony started 10/15 years ago. It is certainly still worth writing stories about it.

But still, now the web is browsed by just about anybody and that makes a fair share of people with low education, no scientific background and mostly computer illiterate (they typically make no difference between their computer/smartphone and the internet). Governments just cannot make them understand even the simplest message about how to behave, e.g. during a pandemic (assuming said government acts in good faith). And that tends to rationalize discretionary actions by technologists.