> Yes, why do people use products from Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, ...

I work at Apple, so I’m not concerned about being monitored—it’s all company-owned equipment and data anyway.

It was the same when I worked at Microsoft. I used Microsoft products exclusively, regardless of any potential privacy concerns.

Employees at Google and Amazon do the same. It’s known as “dogfooding”—using your own products to test and improve them (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food).

As for why people outside these companies use their products, it usually comes down to two reasons: a) Their employer has purchased licenses and wants employees to use them, either for compliance or to get value from the investment; or b) They genuinely like the product—whether it’s because of its features, price, performance, support, or overall experience.

Hmm. Are you aware that I was responding to this comment?

> Why do people use obvious spyware when free software exists?

So, even though the poster was referring to ByteDance when they said "obvious spyware", I was feigning incomprehension in order to ask the question, how do we differentiate ByteDance from what Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon (and the rest) do.

It's a real question - why do technical people, who arguably should know better, and can do something about it - continue to use these data-harvesting and user-selling platforms? The answer is obvious when it's the case of an employee of those companies, I grant you that.

My apologies if you feel your response did address that, and I missed it. If so, please help me see what I missed.