Instead we need to focus our efforts on political action. Privacy is not something that can be controlled at the individual level when you're up against billion dollar budgets.
But the billion dollar budgets are spread across an incredibly broad scale and have to handle a ridiculous amount of data. Certain patterns scale very well for the companies, e.g. using google chrome while logged into the google account
If we just avoid the big players and use a bunch of different, unaffiliated services, it makes mass surveillance more expensive and less likely to yield a strong ROI
Defeatism just gives these companies a better ROI with respect to surveillance, and it also makes us more susceptible to pushes to erode privacy, like the current one to replace passwords with biometric data
This is the most popular move against action, to convince people it is hopeless. In fact, when the people want something strongly enough, it certainly happens. There is a long, well-established history of it.
A term people use to justify pessimism, as if that represents reality better than other options such as optimism.
But I agree that the legal solution is certainly necessary and most essential.
Use FOSS, now the price of direct compromise rises above $0. Turn on NoScript? Whoops, there goes like 90% of web tracking, goodbye surveillance capitalists. Use Tor or other multihop for casual browsing? Most adversaries will now be incapable of tracing an arbitrary circuit of an arbitrary user. Cost of tracking activity is now way up there.
It's true that against an adversary with enough money to surveil massive swathes of ISPs worldwide, strong anonymity is not viable for casual use- that kind of thing requires networks of fixed-rate dummy traffic tunnels, public/open LAN networks, proper operational security with devices, avoiding as much social interaction as possible, the whole shebang.
Political action is needed, but I fail to see how we can actually get past dark money like super PACs and such.
Failing that, if enough people use their general purpose machines in a subversive manner, they themselves will become more difficult to suppress.