>>105988539An observation I've had, that seems to hold with basically all "professional privacy people", is that whilst trying to take an empirical approach you inevitably stumble down the route of learning about the security of various devices and services. Once you discover that X platform has Y security vulnerability it becomes this rent-free lingering apprehension you have, until you become slightly numb to practicality. You no longer perceive platform X to be private because in your mind at any moment a random person could use Y and have complete access to the user's data, even though in reality it's a niche attack that 99% of users will never have to be concerned with.
As such, iPhones become "more private devices" because a, idk, Pinephone for instance is vulnerable to this, this and this and allows (a hypothetical) "anyone" to compromise it, whereas iPhones are only beholden to Apple's invasions. The fact that most people that own whatever the prima facie more private device is will go its entire lifespan without encountering such compromise is considered irrelevant and in their mind would be disingenuous to ignore when giving recommendations.
To their credit, I don't think it's completely misguided, but it leads to this strange mentality where the ethos and philosophy of freedom and privacy is met with disdain in favor of absolute security and reliability found in invasive services. Choose where you stand on this if you can; I'm conflicted personally.
