[minsc__and__boo]

FWIW Amnesty International has been calling out Apple's kowtowing to China and invasion of privacy for the last three years, but it's been falling on mostly deaf ears:

https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/china-social-media...

More to the author's point, in a free market you can have consumer watchdogs providing transparency, but even they can still be drowned out by "privacy"-based branding from giants.