You may have missed the bigger issue of powerful multinational corporations waging an all out war on the concepts of anonymity and privacy in the internet.
If that is "irrelevant", I suggest you read up on the course of human history over the past century.
Are there other more acute priorities, sure. But it's also important to maintain a society where we are actually free to address those other priorities without completely surrendering our identity to public commercial exploitation.
> You may have missed the bigger issue of powerful multinational corporations waging an all out war on the concepts of anonymity and privacy in the internet.
No, not on the internet. On the platforms they provide, for free, and for which they are responsible.
> No, not on the internet. On the platforms they provide, for free, and for which they are responsible.
This is rapidly becoming a distinction without difference.
Consider the bait-and-switch that has occurred with all of these services (Google, Facebook, etc.) - the initial model was free with minimal (or at least less) data gathering but as each service got more popular it has tried to get more and more data out of users. How is this in any way different than Microsoft's embrace/extinguish model in the 90s? Initially any competitors that had a different strategy were doomed to fail because hey, it's free right. Now there's no little to no choice left.
The cumulative effect is an embrace/extinguish of the "old" internet - the one that was about people communicating.
We are now rapidly approaching a point where every byte of data sent over the internet is monetized. Every email is scanned for keywords, every text message becomes a "like" in some database, every human interaction results in shareholder value. It's the triumph of capitalism over humanity.
If that is "irrelevant", I suggest you read up on the course of human history over the past century.
Are there other more acute priorities, sure. But it's also important to maintain a society where we are actually free to address those other priorities without completely surrendering our identity to public commercial exploitation.