Privacy is dead. Why do we think we have anything close to agency over our self when advertising and — in general — profiteering by trafficking in the private lives of individuals is the force that it is today?
The majority of ways people are giving up privacy right now are optional - it's a consequence of using certain devices and software products. By declaring privacy dead you're only opening the door for things to get worse and for privacy violations to become non-optional - constant tracking devices that you can't take off, your home being monitored by default instead of your having to bring in a device that listens to you, no option to use encryption and so on.
Beyond that just thing what will stop this? It will either take leadership from Washington DC or a global uprising. Do you think our politicians will fight for our privacy? The second the first shots are fired by the politicians their political opponents will have millions added to their war-chests. The second they open their mouth super-PACs will be organized to assassinate their character. Not to mention they won’t get that cushy job as board members and what-not unless they play ball.
Sorry, we are in a modern feudal age.
Long term, I do hope laws and regulation will catch up. I know some incredible people in the space and their work and commitment is inspiring. It's unsatisfying though to think that the effects will only be reactive and recourse provided after years of ongoing privacy invasion at mass scale. To me, that's where technology comes in and we should advocate and use products and solutions that respect our privacy (e.g. Qwant).
For what it's worth, I'm one of the developers of Peergos - https://peergos.org - a secure storage solution that puts user privacy and control of data first. We're currently in alpha and looking for users to test it out and give feedback. If it interests you at all, I would really appreciate your views on the product and what we're trying to create.
To answer your question, I think people have much less agency than we think we do. Our brains run the show, not our minds. It would take so much energy to do something about e.g. surveillance capitalism that the brain settles on a useful illusion (agency) and ignores the data that would require energy expenditure for dubious returns (most people in the panopticon are doing relatively well, eh?)
It's not a very good answer, I know, but I have been convinced that there's no deeper reason. It's caloric cheaper to be a good "coppertop" than to wake up and become "Neo". (Yes, a Matrix reference. I am not ashamed.)