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@aral It's a long history that this sort of data collecting for profit is allowed in the first place, so it is actually not as easy as it sounds. For the first part most of the users decide to be blatantly ignorant about it and don't even want to look it up themselves, the popular phrase is "Well so what? It's not like they will do anything bad about it anyway." comes into play and thus allows services like Facebook and the software giant Microsoft to exist in the first place.

"(And, no, we’re not going to keep quiet and disappear because of it."
I didn't really meant in a discouraging tone that it is pointless reporting such event, it is better off letting the user giving the possibility of accessing this information in the first place even if its just approximately 1-2% or so of them wanting to read about it and perhaps do something about it which is better than not having more of this information available.

" building ethical alternatives to their toxic businesses and products."
Well such alternatives exist already, so the base for that is already there but the big problem is not building up one but the promotion of it and promoting things cost a lot of money which most hobby developer just simply can't invest into it, and that is from what I could read from your few post so far people like you come into play, to promote alternative software that is possible to have such kind of platform and software without having to datamine the user. And with the lack of money there is also lack of competition it is almost impossible for a FOSS developer to promote his software against the corporation solution because with their business model they can get more money and invest more in marketing.