I agree with you 100.
I think Apple is doing a couple things fora couple different reasons (all of which I bother me) yet some worse than others
It's because it's a Triple (or more) Monetary Win Business Strategy. I'll explain.
Has anyone noticed how Apple keeps telling you your storage is "almost full" then wants you to upgrade to ICloud+? Because After selling that expensive phone they don't want to wai to squeeze more money out of you. They set ALZl defaults to open and upload to iCloud, so if you don't change them you are Icloudkng EVERTHING. Which fills up. Plus certain things you can't NOT iCloud bc you don't have a choice. What takes the MOST space and is most important to most people? Photos/Vi. So -) they auto default to upload/iCloud all plus your photos. Then tell you you are out of space and ask you to purchase more and more storage for cost each month from $1-$10.

But - ever tried to DOswLOAD your photos back to phone, and downgrade your storage? You can't. I'm almost impossible. The various instructions online don't work. You can do it with dedktop or laptop but even then they will try to reload and further even THEN there are ALZl kinds of bugs and glitches to getting photos back locally only.

So first part - they set all to upload and make local only imposssible and downgrading storage impossible. I had to take screenshots and file fraud claims to get them to downgrade m and stop charging me 9.99 and 1.99 each month.

But even then.
I'm pretty sure they ARE keeping all those photos we supposedly download back OFF iCloud and don't want their storage for AND of course everyone else photos and videos--Why? Second part of strategy (my opinion) - bc they are using ALL our collective photos and videos to Train Large AI models and computers and to run simulations, to prepare for future robots that are more like like, etc. yes U sound a bit conspiracy theorish - but it IS what they are doing! Plus aggregating all the data itself within our devices in photos/videos and other meta data - they can also run that through and sell it, store, make profiles on us, profilers on regions and correlations, etc - all of which is sellable now to various companies AND will be sellable in new ways in the future.
So they benefit triple on us.
I think there should be federal laws saying -1) All settings must be defaulted to highest privacy (ie closed) and 2) requiring Intentional option in, 3) Plain explanations of what "features and settings do, or how could be used, with clear warnings and subject to Lawsuits for fraudulent inducement and invasion of privacy if those descriptions are understandable by an ordinary reasonable person - NOT an ordinary TECHNICAL engineer. If they can't explain what it does to an ordinary person, it probably is doing stuff that ordinary person WOULD not consent to.
And 4 and 5) of new federal laws I wish there - 4) they can't reset or change your privacy settings to make them MORE open after each update, and again req opt-in not opt-out, 5) anyone who does Opt-In - should get metrics of all data disclosed - with a price per amount and data type - PAID back to them. So for example - there should some Global Standards of Data Types - Levels - some more valuable than
Others. EXAMPLE/Hypo If it collect "100MBs/amount" of Valuable Level 1 Data, which is Valuaed at $.005/MB then it owes you 100x.005= 5cents. And so on.
There should be classifications of data, with Intl standards on the Value of that DATA, and if you did OPT-IN, you get an accounting each month of what data and how much of it did THEY collect, and theyOWE you for collecting it.
Bc let's face it - how are they building the powerful computers and AI things they will trillions on? It's on us. Our data. How are making billions in sass and sales- on us, our data.

As it stands NOW they ought to pay us even for data we don't opt-in to but try to
Opt out of and can't!! And for all past data they've collected. And for my own time, and everyone else's time - Each month when a new update comes out - THAT EACH TIME resets all those settings I spent hours to reset back to close - and to research those hundreds of "Feature Flags" to find out which are good, which probably are NOT good and which Are in between or who know so roll the dice either way.

I set all settings to closed bc they auto default to everything open, everything sharing, Bluetooth on, public WiFi on, etc everything "uploading" to iCloud. It takes me HOURs. The Accessibility commands and options alone take me an hour to reset. Yet - even when it's turned off - sometimes my phone turns back on something even without updates bc of bugs of hidden features Apple isn't disclosing. Yet after each update all those settings I spent hours on on phones and Mac and iPad, etc- they default BACK to open. And I spend hours again. And it's taking longer each time, and updates while good for other things- for this it sucks, and updates are WAY more frequent. Makes me crazy.
I'm not a hacker or a tech like y'all probably are. So I apologize for my long rant by a novice such as myself. I'm just a normal person who likes to read and research and teach myself things so even though I'm not technical I doread a lot and so I'm not an idiot either. I've been a Mac user for over 20 years. Use to an @mac, then @me, and of course now @icl - things starting really going to shit and having sync/corruption issues and bugs, etc in 2019, got way worse in 2021, and now it's all the time. It's so frustrating though bc everything - is Mac-it's the invested infrastructure of our lives - to use an analogy:
it's like Apple/Icloud is a Hotel California. It's used to be a nice hotel though. Now it's a Zombie Apocalypse Hotel California. But there aren't any other "hotels" out there that are any better either I'm afraid.