Has everyone forgotten that bit where Facebook sent representatives out to college campuses and paid students twenty bucks to install their VPN app (distributed via Apple's beta or testflight or whatever)?
Apps like Instagram are popular enough that, if Meta wants to move them to their own app store (possibly incentivized via exclusive new features), people _will_ follow. And the VPN thing shows that there's no depths to the level of trickery and and violation of privacy that they will indulge in.
You're phrasing that as though paid market research is on the order of living through war. If we don't all remember that continuously in the context of how dangerous app installs are, it might not be warranted.
I kinda like being able to install open source software without agreeing to anyone's terms of service. I'm typing this from an open source browser going through an open source firewall that blocks trackers which both came from an app store that I contributed to, for example. That's a lot more benefit than letting a bigcorp from another continent with a very different culture decide the rules about everything you can do with every unit sold.
There are paths where you can prohibit businesses you deem evil from paying people to study their lives that don't involve letting your device's content rules be set by an undemocratic and profit-oriented company.
Apps like Instagram are popular enough that, if Meta wants to move them to their own app store (possibly incentivized via exclusive new features), people _will_ follow. And the VPN thing shows that there's no depths to the level of trickery and and violation of privacy that they will indulge in.