I think that kind of argument is really muddying the waters. Google/Amazon/Facebook[1] have absolutely not been "reading our emails over our shoulders" in any

I think that kind of argument is really muddying the waters. Google/Amazon/Facebook[1] have absolutely not been "reading our emails over our shoulders" in any kind of human sense. And all those companies have extensive policies and enforcement structures designed deliberately to prevent the kind of abuse detailed here with TikTok. And it's been decades, and they've really been quite good about it. There are abstract arguments about whether that kind of data centralization is a good or bad thing, and I think that's fine. But that's extremely different from "this company actively spied on its enemies". And I think we need to treat with that distinction and not muddy it. Because if your point becomes "Facebook and Google and Amazon are bad too" it becomes isomorphic to "oh well, nothing can be done", because in practice society is OK with the existing giants. We shouldn't be OK with active spying! [1] Twitter is more of an open question right now, certainly the promiscuous release of the "Twitter Files" nonsense didn't tend to exhibit an institutional inclination toward privacy.