Agreed, but positions like yours tend to get dismissed by calling you a doomer. My enjoyment and optimism as a software engineer towards the internet at large

Agreed, but positions like yours tend to get dismissed by calling you a doomer. My enjoyment and optimism as a software engineer towards the internet at large has gone down dramatically, and I too believe we're 5 years away before quitting the Internet will be fashionable as not having a TV was in the 90s. Between government control, Big Tech, toxic social media and now AI generated bullshit, the Internet as we know it, the single virtual space where everything is accessible from everywhere by everyone, won't last for very long. But already today we're living on a dead Internet made of siloes and a single search engine hegemony. You can call it a meme, but the signs are all there, we're all enjoying our cozy FAANG jobs and any kind of tech activism pushing against this devolution, like the old cypherpunk movement or the hacking scene of the 90s, is pretty much extinct or too busy doing bug bounties for money.