Informational terrorism, a dysphemism that describes the manner by which certain data is abused to "re-rank content" for a "personalized experience," is encoded into the DNA of certain large tech companies.
The ideal would have been a security-first (privacy-first) industry and supply chain. The ideal never was going to happen, anymore than the early educational ideals of the television industry.
Ergo we are not past the point of no return. That point never existed. We are right where we should expect to be, with most people victimised by the industry and the supply chain, and with a small percentage of people working in security/privacy education to mitigate unsafe practices.
Seatbelts and airbags exist. Smoking is banned in many public settings. It took a senseless amount of carnage to achieve these measures.
We just haven't achieved the requisite amount of privacy carnage. Yet.
The issue is everyone is willing to trade convenience for security.
The point of no return is an individual choice.
This is largely the attitude that led to this in the first place. This is about failures of messaging, campaigning, and organising. It is a lack of democratic engagement that directly stems from the idea of individual choice being supreme over everything.