Problem is that one day, it will. I'm old enough to be able to see the difference in how much freedom has been lost online.

It's not impossible. North Korea exists. There's nothing stopping the rest of the world from adopting the same authoritarian regulations and technology bans.

That's why people need to be involved in their governments; elections, local regulations, and what have you. It's easy to complain that things aren't perfect, or that you don't like any of the options; but being part of the process, long term, is the only real way to fix that. The more people that give up and say they don't care, the faster corruption infects everything and ruins what good is there. And trying to be clever and say that "one side is just as bad as the other" is not only a selfish lie people tell themselves to feel better about not doing anything, but it actively helps the authoritarians claim power.

The only thing that staves off corruption and authoritarianism is when the people being governed get involved and stay vigilant. Even small things like school board elections matter down the road.

You want to have a free internet? Then vote in school board elections. Seriously.

Because of Step 3.

Anti porn laws, “child protection” laws, cryptographic attestation of client devices (windows 11 TPM requirement anyone), it’s all headed in a very scary authoritarian direction

It already is. For example, it's basically impossible to run your own email server these days, because most big email providers just block residential IPs to reduce spam.

Lots of ISPs block or heavily filter things like torrents.

Your ISP might decide you having a personal server at home is against their terms and force you to make a business account. They don't want people uploading, only downloading.

Some countries are trying to weaken or ban encryption across the board.

And this is only slightly related, but things like websites that let you watch movies or shows are dying. They either all share the same server for video, or they just copy the files from each other. If you find one and watch a video with a little glitch, you're likely to find that same glitch in all the other websites too. Think things like TV logos, audio suddenly changing language for a few seconds, scan lines on old VHS or TV recordings, etc.. There used to be a lot, but now all the small players are being sued or shut down, and only the largest ones are still alive. The noose is tightening.