[buran77]

It's still of value to have companies that have different incentives even if they will still try to prey on you, if only because you get to spread your digital footprint among competing companies rather than allies.

Going back to Apple, their stance on privacy is more geared towards their internal consumption (abuse?) than towards privacy violation-as-a-service for sale. That's not great but I'll take anything I can get.

I know what I'm sharing with Apple is up for grabs by them to use "against" me. And I know the same is true for Google of Facebook, so no real difference here. The problem is the next level, where what I share with someone else is up for grabs by Google or Facebook, or the other way around. This huge web of data collection and sharing is the big problem, not the posts that I'm volunteering to give to FB or the emails I choose to host with Google.

In other words, when you talk to me alone you choose to give me the information, you're aware I will use it in some way to shape my actions. If you tell me your phone broke, I'll offer to sell you my spare, and you won't turn red that I used the info. But if a stranger shows up at your door a minute later to sell you a phone we're suddenly having a different conversation. Same if you go to a pharmacy on the other side of town to buy some medication and the moment you make the payment I send you a text offering my regrets for your illness.

"A lot worse" can mean very different things if you talk in relative or absolute terms, or if you think some practices are just as bad as others.

[illiac786]

I have a simple (simplistic maybe) way of ranking the tech giants for privacy: how much of their revenue is ads. Facebook is the worst (98% I believe), followed by google (~90% last time I checked). Apple is in the “least worst” category by this metric for now, but they are slipping.