When cheering on such laws, we should always ask ourselves whether we're cheering on the intent or the practical/potential effect. When viewed in the latter context, one might instead cheer on a much smaller, incremental approach towards such legislation (if at all).
No legislation (really, 'no additional legislation' - we're not starting from zero, nor is anarchy desirable) has as much consequence and is not qualitatively different than a little or a lot of legislation; there are downsides and unintended consequences to every option. There is still political and economic power to be had and which is exercised. The question is, do we want that power to be controlled democratically or to be arbitrarily exercised by the most powerful?
The latter is often appropriate; people should be free to do what they want unless others are affected significantly. But when it comes to privacy and freedom of speech, I don't think so.
The difference is that the consequences of no new legislation are known (from experience), while the consequences of new legislation can be estimated, but with complex and far-reaching laws the practical effect is usually very different, with numerous unintended corner cases that can get very nasty. The problem is that politicians (and people in general) usually ignore that, and present it as a choice between how things work today, and how they think things will work once the law passes.
If we took into account the uncertainty properly, I think the balance would look very different, and many laws wouldn't pass simply because no-one would be able to vouch for the actual effects.
>there are downsides and unintended consequences to every option
Even so, there are not the same "downsides and unintended consequence" to every option, nor they have the same impact for every option chosen.
So, this is not some "6 of one, half a dozen of the other" case.
>The question is, do we want that power to be controlled democratically or to be arbitrarily exercised by the most powerful?
Whatever we want, in practice, and for pragmatic reasons, we usually get just a mix of both. So it makes sense to have laws that don't give so much possibility for arbitrary execution, or don't give too much power when arbitrary executed.
When cheering on such laws, we should always ask ourselves whether we're cheering on the intent or the practical/potential effect. When viewed in the latter context, one might instead cheer on a much smaller, incremental approach towards such legislation (if at all).