They also don't care if the open, free internet devolves into an illiterate AI generated mess, because they need an illiterate populace that isn't educated enough to question it anyway. They'll still have access to quality sources of information, while ensuring the lowest common denominator will literally have garbage information being fed to them. I mean, that was already true in the sense that the clickbait news outsold serious investigative news, and so the garbage clickbait became the norm and serious journalism is hard come by and costly.

They love increasing barriers between them and the rest of the populace, physically and mentally.

Silicon valley’s core business model has for years been to break the law so blatantly and openly while throwing money at the problem to scale that by the time law enforcement caches up to you your an “indispensable” part of the modern world. See Uber, whose own publicly published business model was for years to burn money scaling and ignoring employment law until it could drive all competitors out of business and become an illegal monopoly, thus allowing it to raise prices to the point it’s profitable.

A.I. exists. It will continue to get better. If letting people use it becomes illegal, they'll just use it themselves and cut us out. A world where the general population have access to A.I. is the only one where we're not totally fucked. I'm not simping for Google or Facebook, I'd much prefer an open source self hostable version. The only way we can stay competitive is if these companies continue to develop these in the open for the consumer market.

General purpose artificial intelligence will exist. Full stop. Intelligence is the most valuable resource in the universe. You're not going to stop it from existing, you're just going to stop them from sharing it with you.