The idea that the internet should be left to its own devices made sense as long as the internet didn't actually matter, i. e. had no influence on the offline wo

The idea that the internet should be left to its own devices made sense as long as the internet didn't actually matter, i. e. had no influence on the offline world. Those were easier times, but they also limited the usefulness of the medium. If it can't affect peoples' lives, it cannot be beneficial for them. Conversely, if it can be beneficial, it can also hurt them. E-Commerce is the most obvious example: it's incredibly useful to do business online. But it's obvious that such economic activity will invariably lead to scams and frauds. Having established that real things now happen online, the question becomes what to do about it. "Leaving the internet alone" in that context cedes all power to those with the most technical ability. That's a rather arbitrary distribution of power, and I'm not sure people would enjoy the outcome, long-term. For better or worse, democracy and governments have long been the tool to decide and enforce the rules of societies. It's not entirely clear why that model should change just because is "..., but online!". And for all the faults of the US' democracy specifically, it's still far more legitimate than the CXOs of Google, Facebook, Netflix, and Comcast.