Be that as it may, their object-level behavior is still far less shady. And in fact this is an argument that it is good that they exist, because in the counterfactual world where they don't, their niche would be filled by these non-vertically-integrated data brokers and advertisers who ARE financially incentivized to leak and sell and share far more information.

I used to be all gung-ho about being anti-FAANG, those evil privacy violators, but having now talked to friends who have worked at places like FB and Google, their internal data security practices are far more stringent than I had imagined (my friends complain about how difficult these rules make their jobs!). And yeah, sure, they are scooping up as much information about you as they can, and I'm not a big fan of that fact. But I have been convinced that they are actually somewhat decent stewards of that information, and the alternative is far worse.

All that being said, this is a pretty loosely-held belief, and all the surveillance and so on is quite icky to me. I'm still trying to slowly de-google my life and all that, just with a bit less paranoia and urgency.

> their niche would be filled by these non-vertically-integrated data brokers and advertisers who ARE financially incentivized to leak and sell and share far more information

I look at it a slightly different way.

Absent the vertical integration, they wouldn't dominate the market.

Absent dominating the market, they wouldn't wield as many resources.

Absent as many resources, they wouldn't have been able to build a panopticon in the first place.

And even if there were excesses in an alternate world... there would be a market of competitors, which would encourage different behavior.

And possibly even (gasp!) regulation because of the worst excesses.

Instead, FAANG wield vast resources, culled from entrenched monopoly positions, and act just responsible enough (plus lobbying) to avoid regulation.