What happened to the fight for the Internet?

At the moment I am writing this, bad internet bills are being proposed across the US, Canada, Europe, and the UK. They're using the usual tactics: they claim they're fighting for kids or fighting security risks, but in general, that's what surveillance and censorship bills have always claimed.But something feels different. There's so much happening at once, for one thing, it feels like there's a massive coordinated attack on internet freedoms. But it also feels like the wind is out of the sails of these fights, which is alarming, because the stakes have never been higher. Who's coordinating all these? What money is pushing it? Palantir? Heritage Foundation types? Large, centralization-enthused orgs like Meta? All of the above? It's hard to tell. But there's certainly a lot of money flowing underfoot.But it's not just the coordinated attack. The fight itself feels deflated, in ways the fight for the internet hasn't been before. Sure, we have orgs like the ACLU, the Open Rights Group,…