I think until now, the only real thing preserving these consumer protections (and civil rights, while we're at it) was simply the practical difficulty of collecting and compiling that information. Now it's trivial and effortless to collect this information. The old laws still apply, but now the rubber meets the road in actually having them enforced.

>"thing but on computer"

From a tech layperson, all the tech "innovation" I'm seeing seems to just be old stuff but "online" and therefore not subject to the "old rules".