If you care about your “privacy” and no external service providers having access to your data - that means you can’t use iCloud - at all, any messages service, any back up service, use Plex and your own hosted media, not use a search engine, etc.
No what we need is for people to realize that no multi trillion dollar company is going to make life harder for 99.999% of their users because of a few outliers
How exactly is a new feature that is not advertised harder for you, or for anyone for that matter?
I bet most of those made up numbers of yours will have no idea that the feature exists.
A simple screen like they usually do with "Whats new in iOS" could easily have let you enabled it on the get go, with the additional benefit that you would have been made aware of it existing.
This iOS 18.2 update had no such screen, I just updated.
"Ah, I see you care about privacy, but you own a phone! How hypocritical of you!"