So I have a choice between a walled garden (for my best interests of course) and straight up spyware - unless of course I'm willing to play a game of "where's waldo" where I find the perfect combination of android phone with a model number which does not have a locked bootloader, good prolonged community support, custom ROMs with a good reputation and not just a bunch of modifications thrown together by some random XDA user, no weird hardware attestation shenanigans and then participating in the eternal cat and mouse game of SafetyNet breaking my apps because I am not running on a supported configuration (again for my best interests). How flattering.

I know your reply was meant to be satire but I've heard that argument used legit for this case many times. I just don't know how it can be taken seriously in a duopoly like this - unless they are seriously considering GNU/Linux phones to be ready as a primary daily driver or want me to carry around a dumb phone instead?