They're agreeing with you in this step of the PR dance, then after the heavy lobbying they're already administering, they will attempt to de-fang any potential privacy legislation, then point out government incompetence while calling for a right to self-regulate.
The last thing I want is more government power.
Until the legislation is written by the industry and doesn't rein them in one bit but imposes large compliance burdens on smaller competitors and further entrenches the incumbents.
The actual solution isn't corporations or governments, it's people being in control of their own stuff. Google and Facebook can't invade your privacy if your data is on your own device and not their servers.
It's also unclear whether in practice people being in control over their devices better protects the users - back when that was the case, malware was a bigger problem than it is now.
My estimate is that nearly all negative consequences of lack of privacy on the internet have not been due to any sort of nefarious tracking and data gathering on the part of tech companies, but due to people voluntarily sharing information about themselves and those close to them and using various apps as intended. There's a lot of paranoia about how much data is out there, but I can't think of really any major consequences, especially given how pervasive this is all supposed to be. Meanwhile, people getting in trouble due to information they voluntarily shared is extremely common.
Even that incredibly low bar isn't cleared. When you visit a random web site you get tracked by google/facebook before you can be aware that this site is sending your information to them, clicking a link does not imply trust or consent.
It means that Facebook et al don't have it to begin with.
> How do you force people to use software that doesn't do this?
Why do you have to force people to do anything? That conclusion requires some major cognitive dissonance.
There are two options here. One is that people are rational in not caring, and in that case there is no problem and nothing needs to be changed, so what are you complaining about? But let's suppose that's not it.
Then it's that privacy is important and people should care about it but they don't understand, in which case you don't have to force them to do anything, all you need is for them to learn what is happening and why they should care about it. It requires information, not regulations.
You can't regulate a fox in a henhouse, you can only teach the farmers why fences are important before they learn it for themselves.
> It's also unclear whether in practice people being in control over their devices better protects the users - back when that was the case, malware was a bigger problem than it is now.
We need to give all our data to Facebook because malware? How does that prevent malware at all? What is Facebook's server going to do that your phone couldn't do for itself?
"But malware" it seems is the new "but terrorism" or "think of the children" as a generic excuse for every authoritarian policy in the book.
Wrt: malware, what's definitely helped here is that people spend more time on centralized platforms that are able to tackle problems at the source, as opposed to visiting random unsafe websites and downloading random software. Likewise, telemetry in OS almost certainly helps greatly in fighting malware. Centralization in terms of both data and usage helps greatly.