Privacy respecting Operating Systems (and to some extent software/apps) are almost useless if once they’re installed they are used to acess services/apps that aren’t. I see so many posts in self hosting forums about connecting google/apple/amazon cloud services to self hosted HomeAssistant, Nextcloud, etc. If the data is still being sent out to these “clouds” it’s not truly local/self hosted.

Well said. That’s always the bargain. It’s easier to use Google or AWS, there are less hurdles that you need to solve… but solving those hurdles is how you buy your privacy.