And here we are stuck in this world where the computer in your pocket is untrustworthy, and you can't tell a useful benign app from an app trying to upload your life.
and it's a shame.
This is going to be an unpopular opinion, but it appears only 32% [0] of people care enough about privacy to switch to a service that preserves it.
I suspect an even lower percentage know that apps on their phones might even be trying to upload their lives.
This is not the source of "mistrust".
[0]: https://hbr.org/2020/01/do-you-care-about-privacy-as-much-as...
Imagine two options of (1) an organisation who claims to do the right things and (2) an organisation who makes no claims. Picking either option could be a rational response for someone who cares about privacy. Any strategy has to account for the existence of liers/incompetents who claim to do something then don't.
To make privacy conscious decisions requires monitoring many information channels and having a nuanced understanding of the history and motivations of the people involved. That is too hard to do for most rational people. They need clearer support outlining what they are meant to be doing than what they get.
Your is probably an unpopular one, but I'd guess because of questions like "Who are these people that cared about privacy, were willing to switch and did actually switch, but don't realize that their phones might even be trying to upload their lives?" Unless you meant that the results of that survey showing 32% of people cared enough that they actually did something about it, in which case, that's not really an opinion. Just a fact that a very small survey (out of the people who use services/companies that can be switched from, if they cared enough to do so) includes a segment that seems to represent "people [that] care enough about privacy to switch to a service that preserves it."
What this survey does not try to establish is what percent of people "cared" and are "willing", but found it not worthwhile to switch, for reasons such as "this is how I communicate with my friends and I cannot convince them to switch" or decided it just wasn't worth it due to other costs.
For me, WhatsApp comes to mind, but I'm guessing it's a somewhat common problem. I personally do NOT want to use WhatsApp, but I have a group of friends that will not switch and especially with Covid, I do not want to lose those connections. Replace "group of friends" with <community> and WhatsApp with <whatever app>.
Not sure what you even meant by "This is not the source of mistrust". m463 pointed out a couple of things, neither of which was a _source_ of mistrust.
This statistic reflects my unscientific view also.
I am very privacy conscious (I still have a gmail account but that's for job hunting only!) but I know few others that are, however, if these others experienced something detrimental as a result of giving away their privacy then I suspect that 32% figure would increase... but until that happens, people won't care.
Protecting your privacy online these days is time-consuming and, if I'm honest, exhausting: it's a constant arms race between stopping evermore intrusive code from data mining the hell out of me and just being able to use things without constantly analysing them to ensure they're legit.
In fact, yesterday I went to the eff site [0] to see how much data my browser was giving away and even though I have it locked down (I still have js) I was unique anyway...
I've asked myself in the days when I feel like just giving in "what is the danger from <shady company> knowing all this stuff about me?"... And, in all honesty, I haven't come up with an answer that would satisfy that 68%.