It appears that the free global internet, such as it was, which many of us loved and grew up with, is nearly dead. Long gone are the days of anonymous IRC chats or where only paranoiacs thought their emails were monitored. The growing standard is the government demanding websites know who you are all the time to "protect" you from a myriad of trivial things such as "hate speech" or videos of people eating too much.

As has become common, it is not any of the "authoritarian" states we hear about leading the way to the end of internet freedom, but instead the ethnic European parts of the former British Empire. The United Kingdom itself has just implemented legislation which demands all users upload ID to show they are over eighteen when using anything it deems "dangerous," while Australia is restricting all of those sixteen and under from having social media accounts whatsoever, again to protect them primarily from thoughts the government dislikes. The British legislation is particularly dangerous as it is expected that sites based anywhere in the world comply with expansive moderation rules, while Australia's law is a blanket ban on social media usage for an age category. In both cases, however, they kill internet anonymity and set a terrible precedent.

The internet has been under siege from many directions for many years. It is true that America's regime change class found free internet useful for "Color Revolutions" and did at times use it to undermine foreign governments. As a consequence, it has historically acted as a defender of internet freedom when it advances other objectives. Thus, something like "The Great Firewall of China" which we were conditioned to care about, though it did not impact anyone outside of China.