A while back I heard an interesting observation: coffee shop conversations in the Bay Area went from being about cool tech to being about money.
I can't help but feel that this is a deeper change beyond just me facing the usual disillusionment of growing up.
Tech started with a bunch of nerds. Those nerds made loads of money, which attracted the non-nerds. The non-nerds were better at marketing themselves and talking their way up the ladder. Now tech is mostly non-nerds.
Cool tech doesn't fill VC stockings at Christmas. Making B2B SaaS crap however....
Regulation is what keeps things fun after commercialization kicks in. You aren't currently being gouged for the price of your internet by the Bell monopoly thanks to antitrust regulation enforced in the eighties!
Not trying to detract from your point, but the internet is still surprisingly unregulated, although I think we're at the early stages of seeing that change.
The Internet is heavily regulated, just by web hosts and payment processors instead of government.