There's a crackdown on scumbags running businesses without disclosing their identity. Great! That's illegal in many jurisdictions, including the entire EU and California. Finally, ICANN is doing its job.
If you put your real name, address, phone number, and email in your domain registration, and keep it updated, there's no problem. I've had real contact info on all my domains for two decades. I get maybe one phone call a year, two or three email spams, and a letter or two.
What person in their right mind would want their real name, and contact information on a public facing database open to be queried by the entire world? The fact that I have to pay extra money to have a company "Hide" my data is ridiculous to start, I'm just shifting my trust from the entire world to a company who will sell my data or use it for their own purposes.
Having your personal information publicly associated with your domain registration is dangerous even if you're not running a controversial domain. There's a scumbag company out there called the "Domain Registry of America" that sends out fraudulent renewal notices to domain holders who have public information in their domain registration.
If you happen to be a not-savvy domain holder, you get a letter that looks like it's for a domain renewal, you fill it out and return it with a check, and that gives DRA the authority to transfer your domain registration.
And getting it back away from them is an unpleasant process at best.
Because there is never ever a reason to run an anonymous business or website. Nope, we should ban things that people can abuse because freedom is secondary to security.
You clearly don't operate a site that is controversial. I don't either, but I have a friend who operates a small forum with ~2000 users, and that's enough for him to be harassed using info from WHOIS. Sure, there are privacy services like WHOIS Guard, but those aren't foolproof (I forget who, but somebody was leaking WHOIS Guard info a while back for years).
I've received death threats for my views on government which resulted in me pulling my website down for fear of my personal safety. It was a small site and I was 14 and didn't want to spend extra on WHOIS protection. My viewpoints on government at the time were rather tame, though libertarian leaning. The viewpoint that bought me the most flack was being in California and supporting gun rights and criticizing the fear-mongered bans on certain firearms.
Free speech? Nah, fuck it. Opening a venue for people to harass and threaten others is more important.
If people have a valid need to contact the admin there is an admin@domain.com they can email that does not give my full name and home address.
Having to pay a company to hide these details is extortion at best. It's like the mafia asking for "protection money". If you don't pay them, they have someone pay you a little visit and convince you it's worth the investment.
I guess it really depends on what kind of site you're running.
For boring, non-interactive sites, I think that's probably fine.
I never put real information into WHOIS data (except for my email) because I have absolutely no desire for people who check to know who I am. I'm not running businesses and I've never made a dime off any of my sites.
I just think of all the community drama I've seen and how much worse it would be if they had my real name, phone number, and address. Not even considering all the other places I post under the same screenname, there's been plenty of nonsense on the forums I've run, and people have been perfectly happy to dox and harass other people whose personal information they could find out over incredibly trivial things.
If you put your real name, address, phone number, and email in your domain registration, and keep it updated, there's no problem. I've had real contact info on all my domains for two decades. I get maybe one phone call a year, two or three email spams, and a letter or two.
Quit whining.