It is absolutely relevant; it is arguably the most relevant question. It lies at the basis of the entire concept of "threat model" in security.
The police wants to track you to investigate you as a suspect in a crime. Facebook wants to track you to know who you are talking to. Amazon wants to track you to learn what you might want to buy. The Chinese government wants to track you to know if you might work for or against it. And so on.
I, like most people, give wildly different amounts of shit about every single one of these agents, and take different levels of precautions as a result.
I don't buy the argument that you don't want Amazon or Facebook to track you, but you are ok with Apple or Google tracking you.
In case its not clear, because Im really doubting that people have a good grasp of privacy here, when you buy an Iphone, it phones home quite a bit collecting pieces of data about you that Apple can and does use internally for their advertising purposes, and you cannot opt out of it.
You don't have to buy it, I'm gonna give it to you for free: I don't want Facebook tracking me, because I don't like them and don't trust them. OTOH I don't care if Google tracks me because I am an actively paying user of Google on a contract. I also don't care if Apple tracks me because they have a much cleaner track record.
It is absolutely relevant; it is arguably the most relevant question. It lies at the basis of the entire concept of "threat model" in security.
The police wants to track you to investigate you as a suspect in a crime. Facebook wants to track you to know who you are talking to. Amazon wants to track you to learn what you might want to buy. The Chinese government wants to track you to know if you might work for or against it. And so on.
I, like most people, give wildly different amounts of shit about every single one of these agents, and take different levels of precautions as a result.