Just about everyone else other than the tech companies are actually selling your data to various brokers, from the DMV to the cellphone companies.
First-hand account from me that this is not factual at all.
I worked at a major media buyer agency “big 5” in advanced analytics; we were a team of 5-10 data scientists. We got a firehose on behalf of our client, a major movie studio, of search of their titles by zip code from “G”.
On top of that we had clean roomed audience data from “F” of viewers of the ads/trailers who also viewed ads on their set top boxes.
I can go on and on, and yeah, we didn’t see “Joe Smith” level of granularity, it was at Zip code levels, but to say FAANG doesn’t sell user data is naive at best.
So you got aggregated analytics instead of data about individual users.
Meanwhile other companies are selling your name, phone number, address history, people you are affiliated with, detailed location history, etc.
Which one would you say is "selling user data"?
Their privacy stories are marketing first.
Google and Samsung do.
They went from “Don’t be evil” to a cartoonish “Doctor Evil” character in a decade.
So in other words, "companies operating within a nation are expected to abide by the laws of that nation"?
Apple structures their systems to limit the data they can turn over by request, and documents what data they do turn over. What else do you believe they should be doing?
Much like every other tech company you test the request.
Apple never does.
Citation needed?
I trust Apple about as far as I can throw them too. They are inherently anti-consumer rights everywhere in their ecosystem. The "Privacy" angle is just PR.
None of the big companies expressly sell your information. Not because they are altruistic, but because it is an asset that they want to protect so they can rent to the next person.
I don’t think any large tech company is morally good, but I trust Apple the most out of the big ones to not do anything nefarious with my info.