Yeah. Looks like the future they want is complete marginalization of free computers, of free people. The machines will have to be corporation and government owned in order to network and participate in society. If we own the machine, we're excluded. Ostracized. Even the language they use is disgusting. They say we're "tampering" with the system, as though it wasn't ours to begin with. It makes me really sad that this is what we're heading towards.
The thing about networks is that we can create our own.
Citizens creating informal horizontal networks between themselves is threatening to social harmony, and as more states around the world learn from the highly successful Chinese model, they are unlikely to permit the Wild West à la the old-school internet you are thinking about.
The thing about governments is they are just as tyrannical as the corporations. "Any network we cannot surveil and dominate is banned" is absolutely within the realm of possibility.
Then the government would be banning the gathering of people. At that point we're pretty fucked.