A side effect of rapid technological change is that there are now multiple generations who didn't experience the pre-monetized internet.

It's like we've hit a tipping point where enshittification etc. are allowed to thrive because there's no longer a critical mass of people who know from first-hand experience that things don't have to be this bad.

It's become easy to pacify young people with the meme that older people didnt really have a better internet, they're remembering the past as better than it actually was.