Also, just because they are rich or can start a tech company doesn’t make them any more entitled to live wherever they want any more than anyone else.
Just a very bizarre stance IMO and it seems one-sided.
Of course not. I'm saying that in this world you are not entitled to live in other people's territory and you must first gain their permission to live in their territory. If you are able to make the prerequisite arrangements you should be free to live wherever you want.
So EU citizen moving to the UK must have known on the day they decided to migrate that their entitlement to live in the UK was always subject to this caveat.
It may suck, but it was never an right that could never be revoked.
For people who already qualified for permanent residence (i.e. who had been working in the UK for 5 years) nothing changed.
For people who were in the UK for less than 5 years the automatic right to stay disappeared by in reality I believe that they were given so-called "pre-settled status" until they reach the 5 year mark and can stay as long as they want, from what I understand.
Personally I like have proof of things so I had applied for proof of permanent residence (under EU law) before the UK actually left the EU (there was a gap of several years to do so after the referendum), which was quite straightforward, so moving to the new "settled status" only took a few minutes online.
Of course, EU citizens who have been in the UK for 6+ years and have permanent residence can also apply for citizenship and forget about all of this altogether.