There are indeed many powerful motives supporting the march of technological authoritarianism. But validating the narratives about why ever-more control is need

There are indeed many powerful motives supporting the march of technological authoritarianism. But validating the narratives about why ever-more control is needed is a form of support, which we should avoid doing. Rather we need to recognize that they're merely instances of the same old authoritarian fallacy of more control promising better outcomes, because what increased control ends up ruining cannot be enumerated. In actuality, reducing independent autonomy stifles invention and suffocates society. "Anti-scraping" is a dubious problem in the context of web sites aimed at publishing information. The best "anti-scraping" solution is a published API that includes bulk downloads. I'll admit there's a tiny sliver of sites for which controlling consumption might make sense, but it's certainly not ones that allow browsing without even logging in.