“It feels like people are tired. And it feels like the PR for locking things down has more acceptance publicly than before.”
The net neutrality marches, the SOPA blackout, the open-web energy of the early 2010s. Gone. Locked-down platforms won not by beating the argument but by outlasting it. People got tired of fighting and companies got better at selling control as convenience and safety. The activists didn’t lose the debate. They ran out of steam while the other side kept shipping.