Generally speaking I agree.. but having observed human behavior long enough, I don't think it's realistic to break that addiction. People are attracted to free

Generally speaking I agree.. but having observed human behavior long enough, I don't think it's realistic to break that addiction. People are attracted to free services like flies are to manure, and often these free services are advertised with a huge budget and hype, and often come with network effects (~all of your friends and family are using said free service). Nobody reads the ToS, nobody cares about the implications of trusting their data to someone who doesn't care.. year after year we have these reports of people getting burned by the big G and still people keep using Google and acting surprised when they screw you over. It seems to be human nature, and also nature of the market. It's the digital equivalent of race to the bottom. The shortsighted, uninformed, apathetic, and irrational people outnumber those who care, by a huge margin. "Just educate people" isn't happening any more than we can just tell people to "git gud." And that is why, in the physical space, we have laws that offer people some protection against terrible products that are unfit for purpose, unsafe, broken, etcetra. We wouldn't need those laws if we could just fix people and make them informed & rational; in that case, the market would truly sort out itself. It's just not happening, and it's also not happening in the digital space, so it's very possible we're going to see the same laws in the digital space.