while, yes, regardless of your privacy settings google still collects a sickening amount of data on you, much of these things (like voice recordings and location history) can be managed and disabled in the settings. if you wish to go further, grapheneos removes A LOT of tracking potential.
these should be opt in features, but one can opt out of much of them.
this is known as a strawman. nice try
pronouns are a part of the English, and many other, languages.
that's not really the point considering this didn't occur in a vacuum. this one event can come to just be a grift and what I said will still be true.
treating people respectfully is not getting offended. please touch some grass and open your eyes.
the only thing I'll say is the piece about "no viruses" would kinda go away if desktop Linux picked up at all. the security on a default Linux system is worse than macos and windows with substantial hardening efforts needed. the only reason viruses and other malware isn't common on Linux as is is because of the tiny user base.
with all this said, if enterprise use got more common, security would quickly become an important aspect.
telemetry as a whole isn't bad. it depends what they are collecting. companies should provide a log of the (raw) telemetry data they've collected from you. if they're not comfortable sharing it it's probably too invasive.
Matrix or Signal only for me. nobody uses Whatsapp here in the states, sms is simply insecure in every way, and telegram has very suspicious roots imo, along with a lack of e2ee and a terrible ui.
signal is the most secure option and matrix is federated making it the most "open" option.
i would like to add on to this, do not bring your own device, just simply keep school/work and personal stuff entirely separate. simple as that.
all work and schools that allow you to use a personal device that I'm aware of will require you to have whatever software for surveillance that they have on provisioned devices, you'll likely end up messing up and leaking something private, and it just takes up storage space.
it's the organization's device, they can put whatever nonsense they want on it, just be sure that you only ever use accounts from them on the device. never a personal account of any kind.
there is a difference between something being the airlines responsibility, and you still having some form of etiquette and thought for others when said airline wont fix the issue.
just because it shouldn't be your problem doesn't mean it isn't. absolute individualism is a curse
they've done it for you by accident