Who is they? The big tech giants? What are they doing with this information other than targeted ads? Are they selling it to the government?
I don't really send much compromising stuff, certainly not dirty pics, and I just cannot think of any relevant or useful information that I'm giving out in texts, phone calls, etc that I would even care about the entire world knowing. To be clear, I'm not making the argument "if you have nothing to hide, why do you care?" I'm more saying, who cares, and why are we attributing god-status to these agencies? Is there any reason to believe there exist actual accurate databases of every individual in the country with highly private information? Even if that's true, which I doubt, what is that information ultimately used for other than selling ads? What could it be used for? Is our government remotely close to being competent enough to use it for nefarious purposes even if they wanted to?
I'm just trying to approach this with skepticism. I actually have deep knowledge about OpSec/data privacy/etc and I know what sort of privacy measures I'd need to do if I wanted to avoid, say, getting a subpoena sent to me for illlegal activities, but for the average person, I just don't think any of this matters.
All that said I do think having a phone in and of itself is a liability, and I am planning to completely ditch my phone in the near future, because it's almost impossible to remain anonymous or private with one, unlike computers. You can just emulate Android on bluestacks if you were so inclined.