You don't believe there are LLMs posing as citizens online? Or, you don't believe that governments are trying to use that to push narratives, propaganda to destabilize citizens trust? Or, you don't believe anyone would be gullible enough to fall for LLM targeted propaganda?

Rather than a trust by default model, we switch to a distrust by default model.

Correct, when anyone with a few thousand to spend can create botnets to mimic and mislead a nations citizens, that's a problem. When Billionaires can create private datacenters to publish and promote their own propaganda anonymously, that's a problem. The world is too connected and too illiterate to handle a free, open, anonymous internet safely IMO. It's being taken advantage of by too many big players with little to no pushback.

Anonymous internet isn't dead, but no country can saddle it, so for the safety of any Nation, the default needs to be gated in some way shape or form. Otherwise, every Nations citizens is at the mercy at how well any enemy Nation can utilize targeted propaganda in a heavily unregulated medium.

As a Nations Citizen, you either:

1). Handle your own shit - in which case there's not much Nations can do to keep someone off anonymous, open internet.

2). Rely on your Government to provide and protect you from other Governments trying to destabilize forementioned Government.

The default needs to be #2 for the large majority.

My devices are restricted from accessing the Internet, of course.

That being said, most people just trade privacy for convenience by signing up for corporate services. And that gives the tech companies more leverage over those people because "upload your ID or else your alexa won't work."

Tech companies have no qualms with making your things non-functional unless you give in to their stipulations...

Contact your congresspeople and let them know how you feel about ID verification, and why it's dangerous to democracy.

Maybe get a mesh radio and learn about nodes, so that you have at least some form of communication if they lock down the web. Maybe a ham radio too, but be aware than many jurisdictions require a license to transmit anything (passive receiving is usually fine).

Download a local copy of everything you think you would want post-internet. Wikipedia, project gutenberg, ifixit, etc.

If you like your neighbors, consider discussing a network of wifi repeaters or ethernet cables to build your own LAN/intranet in the hypothetical post-internet scenario.

If you still use streaming services, transition to self-hosting local copies of all the media you care about.

If you have millions billions of dollars, consider starting your own ISP or VPN server, building out your own fiber-optic infrastructure, maybe launching your own satellites into space, with a commitment to open-source, decentralized platforms and anonymity?

Or contribute to a tech co-op that might eventually be able to implement something similar.

Other than that, all you can do is raise awareness about how easy it would be for an oppressive government to shut down the internet, or even just lock it down to any "unverified"/unidentifiable users...

It's just pining for the time before they figured out how to target marketing and sell data

As a society, our laws, rules, and regulations, have all been worn down to the point were at now. We could have had nice things. If everyone got a decent education, we may have been able to weather the AI storm, but we that just didn't happen. Everyone in modern society is neck deep in technology. From entertainment to social interactions to news to audio blips to doomscroll - it is prime for propaganda and misinformation, and has been for some time now. There has to be an answer for that. Short-term and long-term with how fast technology has been moving in the past 200 years.

What are the alternatives?

I don't know - maybe it doesn't matter if we Hadron Collider ourselves into a blackhole.

Step 1: get people addicted, monetize it to no end

Step 2: cover it up and lie about it being fine, spread misinformation of you have to

Step 3: plan a scapegoat tactic as a backup just in case. Maybe 2.

Step 4: buy out politicians who'll support you when it's time to take action; like "age verification" as a redirect (as if the gov has ever fine anything promptly!)

Step 5: Get the media to sort of drop coverage to get people to forget about it with other stuff, and watch the lawsuits and trials fade away into the background as there's no more media coverage for it.