> But if we think about it for even a second quite often these precedents are terrible and stifling to everyone in tech.

Doesn't everything else in your post kinda point to the industry needing a little stifling? Or, more kindly, a big rethink on privacy and better controls over one's own data?

Do you have an example of a similarly terrible precedent in your opinion? One that doesn't include the blatant surveillance state power-grabbing "think of the children" line. Just curious.