This is the same thing that they did to Hong Kong. When you have people protesting for freedom, you get them to go back into hiding, and then change over the leadership, and the rules.
Covid 19 is real, but it did put a swift end to the protests....what leaders where elected while those restrictions where in place? Where did all those protesters go?
The basic foundations of the internet are broken, because the 'do nothing' profit of everything technology lunatics that 'run' everything, and have centralized the internet the best they can to the general public, haven't innovated in over 20 years.
Patents on one click purchases are more important then securing the basic foundation of the internet. That foundation being communication. Why we need anything like reddit, or facbook, or instawhatever to pass basic messages, pictures, and video to our friends an family shows you how much of a joke 'hot tech' is/
Take a look at the last article about AI. Said something about only '100' people know how AI works. What they meant to say is that they need to you keep believing that these 100 people will "save us." The foundations of AI have been worked on since Turing.
We all need to pull our heads out of our asses if we are going to make it through this.