I agree. I think for most the answer may be a mix of complacency, convenience, and conforming to the norm.

Free software and the FSF. When the Snowden leaks came out, they weren’t news to me – just confirmation.

This has been around for a very long time. I’m always surprised that more people haven’t heard of it.

Yes, this is the crux of LineageOS. There is a fork called DivestOS that is more libré and reduces dependence on Google services, as well as having bootloader re-locking for some devices.

Google does this time and again, and a workaround always gets released eventually. Then again YouTube has been steadily going downhill these past several years, so maybe it’s for the best.

I remember Sony forcing everyone to use their proprietary SonicStage software and proprietary ATRAC3 audio file format with their Mini Disc players. Nothing else would work on their products. Thank goodness big industries don’t influence governments worldwide, or we’d be heading into some kind of dystopia DRM-laden in every aspect of our lives. Oh wait…

Mysterium looks pretty interesting, being completely decentralized. All the mainstream VPNs are pretty shady to me, being run in a centralized manner and some heavily marketed by “influencers”.

You do realize that RHEL is open source, right? The “pirating” has already been done by RockyLinux (formerly CentOS).