(Part 1)
The question is which party/parties you trust. It’s a question of who the right custodian of your data is. Because that is the question we are dealing with here:
Our terms of engagement in the connected world make it impractical and even unnecessary for you to have sole ownership and control over the sharing of the data your actions and transactions generate. But you do have agency over who you transact with. Whether you allow Google to build your social graph as a result of your email, video chat and text messaging or whether you allow Facebook is up to you. Whether you subscribe to Apple Music or Spotify is up to you. Whether you buy groceries from Amazon’s Whole Foods or from Trader Joe’s is up to you. So is who you bank with. All companies will use your data to enrich themselves directly or indirectly. But whether they will do it at your cost is something you can evaluate.
The question is Custody for the 21st Century.
For example as of May 2020, you can argue that it makes business sense for Apple to protect your data with them because their revenue – whether from hardware or from services – does not depend on selling your data to advertisers who may build harmful, incomplete, incorrect profiles on you. It makes logical sense then for you to entrust your personal information, say that generated by your everyday usage of your phone, to Apple instead of other companies. Extend that to the other places where you share your data or get your media.
The decision is also simplified – in many cases it may not be who to trust, it may just be that I don’t care enough.
Viewed as a choice of custody, it becomes an issue that people in tech, maybe even the broader public, can be coaxed to consider the importace of.
Endnote: Framing the issue as a choice of custody also makes it easy for people to realise where they have little or no practical choice: One’s ISP. One’s choice of phone. One’s choice of online store.