> I stopped reading at "what's the difference between a massive cover up of subverting the most basic tenants of how your systems are designed and never claiming those tenants in the first place".
I do not see who is "subverting the most basic tenants of how your systems are designed", and if this is trying to say that the other companies are never claiming those tenants in the first place, then that is objectively false. Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc. have claimed being "privacy first" more times than I count, and, my point is, they are all making similarly dubious promises regarding policy (like, closed-source encryption, no data sent unless you ask for it, etc.).
> If you feel like an OS where the biggest comfort is you can tear out it's core works best for you, go ahead.
This is misleading. Thing is, it is not "tearing out its core" precisely because Google services are actually _not_ at the core of Android, yet. You still cannot do that with iOS (because they do not allow tampering to begin with, least you figure out a way to avoid leaving a fingerprint in their servers).
> "I'm not going to get into the most important aspects of how secure a modern platform" is not a ringing endorsement.
First, none of the topics mentioned are the "most important aspects of how [to?] secure a modern platform".
Second, I distinguish privacy from security. i.e. it doesn't matter if it was the most secure platform in the world if I have to trust all the data to a distrustful entity to begin with.
In fact, I actually prefer privacy over security. E.g. for messaging, I value using servers _I_ control/trust much higher than E2EE encryption, which is definite secondary worry. Metadata is a dangerous thing to leak.
> A mentality of privacy first even if it's just for the sake of marketing differentiation will always come ahead of a mentality of "data collection so we can sell ads",
This is basically trying to answer "to whom I put my blind trust?", so it's subjective. But in my experience it is usually the most "privacy marketing" companies that are usually the worst regarding privacy. See most VPN resellers. Most privacy marketing is just bullshit.