They choose to use websites and software, whose developers in turn choose to send usage data to third parties. Trust in this sense is necessarily transitive.

They choose to use websites and software, whose developers in turn choose to send usage data to third parties. Trust in this sense is necessarily transitive. In a complex world with long supply chains, almost everything works that way - I don't get to choose every ingredient in a restaurant meal either. Either way, the point is that users do have control today and that they use this control to maximize convenience at the expense of privacy. Thus the idea that "people being in control of their own stuff" will help is kind of meaningless - they are already in control. Even choosing not to be informed is a choice - people are not informed because consequences so far have been minimal relative to other threats in their lives. My estimate is that nearly all negative consequences of lack of privacy on the internet have not been due to any sort of nefarious tracking and data gathering on the part of tech companies, but due to people voluntarily sharing information about themselves and those close to them and using various apps as intended. There's a lot of paranoia about how much data is out there, but I can't think of really any major consequences, especially given how pervasive this is all supposed to be. Meanwhile, people getting in trouble due to information they voluntarily shared is extremely common.