All depends on your threat model. A company openly collecting your data by your say so seems significantly less threatening (to me, to many others) than all the actors who are doing it without your knowledge or consent.
I consider Google to already be an agent that is working for me. It obviously has its own interests, which are not perfectly aligned with mine. But its interests and my interests in the space of location data collection are sufficiently aligned that I don't object to them having it.
The point is, any / all data collection is - or should be - suspect. Today's benevolent actor is tomorrow's victim of a hack, or simply changes their spots. Furthermore, even data that is positioned as harmless (i.e., phone call metadata) can tell stories.
Finally, per "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" (and others) these minor privacy infringements add up and is used against us.
Read the book. Once you come to realize the collecting of your data isn't "passive" and that ultimately, it's being done to be used against you - and your free will - your perceived benefits are insignificant.
Put another way, being complacent and complicit not only sells-out your own privacy, it compromises the privacy of all those round you, your (future) offspring, etc.
I'm not going to read a whole book about this issue.
I already know that the collecting of data isn't passive. I deny that it's being done to be used against me. I also deny any concrete harms for most people on the short to medium term, although the far future is hard to predict.
Given that I deny the likelihood of harm to this data collection, I'm setting a concrete benefit against no drawbacks. Therefore I will continue to use it.
In some camps, a couple of years ago, the book was on a number of "Book of Year" lists. The issue is far less simplistic than you're making it out to be. That fact that you dismiss the risks and dangers is something - funny enough - covered in the book as well.
p.s. Not passive, as in the aim is to be proactive (in influencing behavior). There are plenty of other sources that explore how fragile "free will" is, so maybe we can do that some other time? :)
Do you find you convince many people with this style of argumentation? I used to do it this way but it never worked out for me. You think I'm naive, but in fact I just have different priorities from you, and different estimates of the likelihood of outcomes.
Odd. From my POV, there's nothing to argue here. You've decided. And per you, that decision is final.
Once you said, "I'm not going to read...to learn new things..." the conversation was over on my end. The line was drawn. But, for the record, there are other here that might be interested in new ideas and new perspectives, and the flaws in their own. It's why I'm here. So for completeness and fairness to others, I played through.
I'm fairly confident you didn't hear an idea I referenced. So to me, it's odd that you perceive someone was trying to argue with you. Why would anyone bother? You're immune to all outside influences, yes?
It's not on to say someone said something, and put quotes around it, when they did not actually say that thing. Your quote would be misleading even if it only enclosed the words I did say, since you took away the context (you told me to read a whole particular book on a subject, I said I would not -- nobody has time to read every book a random internet commenter tells them to read). But enclosing words I didn't even say in quotes as well to make me sound even more unreasonable is beyond the pale.
