Perhaps we could consider what is going on here to be something of a small-townification of cities. I grew up in a small town. If something was going on out from behind closed doors, everyone knew about it. And sometimes they knew even if it was behind closed doors. Prior to the current era of data ubiquity, to escape such a thing, you could find some level of anonymity in a crowd. Walking through Times Square in NYC…
More like some accept this grudgingly, as, until recently, with the near-ubiquity of delivery services, there were, for many, simply no choice: Stay at home, unseen, and starve, or venture out for groceries, et al.
Public space serves at least two distinct purposes that we conflate at risk to both privacy and freedom: transit and public life. Not all who need the former want the latter, but our physical world does not permit them to have one without the other.