I find the premise that users should trust tech companies by default absolutely ludicrous. The author seems to live in a bubble where tech companies don't commi

I find the premise that users should trust tech companies by default absolutely ludicrous. The author seems to live in a bubble where tech companies don't commit privacy violations regardless of what their privacy policies say. Yet in the real world, even when they're caught with their hand in the cookie jar, the fines these companies are forced to pay are just the cost of doing business. Earlier this year Microsoft was fined $20M for collecting PII from children, which it "shared" with advertisers[1]. And this is _Microsoft_, not even an adtech giant. The abuses from those have their own Wikipedia articles[2,3]. FB was famously fined $5B in 2019[4]. It would be beyond naive to believe that these were just "oopsies", and that somehow these companies have changed their ways. _This_ is why it's not implausible that the software that runs on our most personal computing devices, built by these same companies, is hoovering up our data in the sneakiest ways possible. Equating this to conspiracy theories is dishonest at best. When Mark Zuckerberg puts tape over his webcam and microphone, it would be foolish to think you know better not to. [1]: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/06/ftc-will-require-microsoft-pay-20-million-over-charges-it-illegally-collected-personal-information https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/06/... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_concerns_regarding_Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_concerns_regarding_Goo... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_concerns_with_Facebook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_concerns_with_Facebook [4]: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2019/07/ftc-imposes-5-billion-penalty-sweeping-new-privacy-restrictions-facebook https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2019/07/...