Everyone sees the power of information and wants to control it.
Instead of our government safeguarding the Internet, both from foreign and internal threats, being a neutral arbitrator defending free speech and the right to expression, protecting privacy, the government made itself the conductor and master of all (in the background).
They gave themselves the power to censor and invade every aspect of people privacy. They allowed a few tech giants to establish monopolies, in fact they chose the winners and losers early on as with Google.
Do you know anything run (controlled) by the government that works well?
The Internet is no different.
I'll add something. The loss of trust -- knowledge and belief in true facts.
We no longer have any reason or justification for believing anything we find on the internet. It is so overloaded with junk that whatever true facts exist are buried below a mountain of misrepresentation and fabrication.
It's over. The beautiful network of sites to spread knowledge, to entertain, to express, to do business, to communicate with each other..... gone.
I'm lucky. At 73 I got to see it from before start to finish. Like the music of the 60's and 70's, it will never be that good again; the internet peaked and exploded and is destroyed for any real, useful purpose.
Control and surveillance are all that's left. Sic Transit.