"Privacy," though isn't about Google shovelling reaction videos into my feed in order to keep me on the site.
It's more about every site requiring authentication and more information than they need about my identity, which in turn, gets sold to third-parties or gets stolen in a breach. And then can be used to impersonate me, craft scams targeting me, etc.
Agree though that recommendation algos are bad and over-used. They're designed to give the illusion that the system is curating content that you would like. An algorithm can't recommend something you would like. It hasn't sat down with you over countless dinners and nights out and got to know you; nor has it been off and read it's own books and seen movies on its own time. It's not going to drop off a worn copy of Wide Sargasso Sea because that's what you need to read right now. Recommendation algorithms are designed for retention and retention-only. They throw away almost all data about you except what you've clicked on recently.