Technology

They can all be parts of the threat.

The threat itself is that governments and big corps have a comprehensive strategy on censoring and controlling the Web. Since the Web is nowadays the only media space that has preserved some appearance of freedom, this is bad. The end goal is so that nobody would hear you scream. I mean, they've already succeeded for most part.

Parts of that strategy are (I tried to separate them, but they intersect):

Attracting people to centralized controlled recommendation systems, which obscurely determine what you'll see and what you won't. Since your ability to process information is limited, this simply means that no outright censorship is even needed. You just won't ever see "wrong" information or discourse or even emotion on something, if you don't search for it intentionally. That's Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, search engines, now also LLM chatbots when used instead of a search engine.

Confusing and demoralizing people out of organizing outside those. That's a softer version of the first point, as in "maybe we won't decide what you think about, but we will slow you down". There are actions and laws and propaganda most efficient in that direction. Apathy is death.

Market pressure - businesses use the Web in a particular way, so small nudges for that culture to be on the track particularly convenient for control are made.

Fake progress and complexity race - yes, maybe enterprise software has to be complex. But Web technologies and Web browsers don't. Most of the "new" things are apparently intended just to cut off the competition with smaller resources. Also oligopolization.

Legal climate endorsing oligopolization.

Then there are outright censorship and prosecution and bullying.

And then there are likely cases of mafia-style assassin sh*t, which we wouldn't know about anyway. I think Aaron Schwarz and Ian Murdock may fit here.