I honestly thought this was how it always worked...seems like a good thing if they're at least appearing to not track people who aren't signed in, especially since in every other way they will try to get your data fighting tooth and claw. (Not saying they aren't tracking habits of non account users though)
I've been using more and more flatpaks lately on arch and fedora based distros, i have no idea how snaps compare but seems similar? Seems an odd push from Ubuntu, but could make more sense than deb packages for non techy users perhaps?
Everyone I know pretty much uses fb messenger exclusively, it's the only reason I still have it. If there was a reliable way to hook into messenger from another app I'd switch in a second, but still the reliance on messenger is there.
Is a think tank like the thought police?
Remind me of that scene in The Dark Knight when Lucius Fox has all the screens with all the data from every smartphone around.