Short in question

This short popped up in my recommended. It's clearly AI (tinny voice, random jump in scenes in the middle of one of her sentence, very awkward "oh yeah, stop me"), but, unlike older AI videos, virtually nobody in the comments realizes. With how good AI is getting, we'll very probably have actual riots and political conflict breaking out over AI hoaxes and AI-fueled sentiment campaigns (if the WhatsApp lynchings in 2017-2018 are any measure of how bad social media hoaxes can get). On the other side, citizen journalism of atrocities may come to be worthless and easily dismissed as AI. Humanity is cooked, as the kids say.

(Reposted as a text post and with a better title. Previous comments can be viewed here)

I'm posting this in ~society rather than ~tech, as I feel like it's more a question of societal change and policy decisions rather than tech change. Please feel free to move if I'm wrong.

Seeing the predictable Discord data breach for age verification, it feels like the walls are closing in. My country has announced a similar policy to the UK just recently and I feel a sense of loss for a crucial part of my life that may go away.

I don't think I'm being too nostalgic by saying that I felt much more comfortable speaking freely on the internet when anonymity was the default. I didn't engage in any illegal activity - or even in my view immoral activity. I just made friends from around the world and learned a lot.

I am not making the argument that the internet of the 90's and 00's were 'safer' - I'm sure there is plenty of bad things that happened without me being aware. But this theoretical bad stuff is still being used to make us mandatorily give our government issued identity documents to corporate entities, and it's not paranoia to think they want to find a way to profit from this, and not invest heavily to defend it.

I get the structural forces that are driving this change, but it still makes me sad. I feel like I'm running a defensive cyber operation with no training or expertise. I do my best to stay private with VPNs, tracker blocking, DNS filters, but I feel like I'm losing. We have a whole department for this at work and they are very busy - I am just a lay person doing their best.

No matter what I do, either the governments of the world or surveillance capitalists will build up a picture of who I am far beyond what I am comfortable with. My meagre efforts are like trying to stop the tide by kicking it.

Do others who grew up with a more open, more anonymous internet feel similarly? Do you try and protect your privacy, are you resigned, or are you somewhere in the middle?