No matter how shit Linux and Qubes OS are security-wise, the fact will always remain that Windows, macOS and Google-branded hardware/software have morphed into 100% surveillance platforms that have monetized users in a thousand different ways.
Corporations endorsed data siphoning as their primary business strategy after government failed to enact strict regulation, laws and stiff penalties for stealing and hoarding personal user data. This is also no mistake, since it supercharges the government panopticon fetish. Hence the term “government-corporate-surveillance complex”.
Give me less-secure, open source Linux/Xen shit any day of the week over any corporate option that feeds billion $ bottom lines - they are data whores masquerading as alternative platforms and an essential part of the modern security state.
Unfortunately in the end calculation, all computers/peripherals, all code etc. is unfit for purpose for providing proper security from skilled and well-resourced outfits. Nothing is going to change that. Only mid-tier to pissant adversaries will be swatted away by privacy enthusiasts who go the whole nine yards.
And Google etal. won’t stop sucking government c**k anytime soon. So, we’re left with definitely backdoored shit like Windows, or partially useless open source. Easy choice then for stuff like comms/browsing and so on that one is willing to risk i.e. doesn’t mind sharing (in probability) with 5 eyes buddies who attack the entire privacy-minded population at whim (illegally and with no penalty), see: How the NSA Attacks Tor/Firefox Users With QUANTUM and FOXACID - Schneier on Security
If people think they’ll allow the .02% of Internet data they can’t immediately siphon to be left alone, they are sadly mistaken and haven’t done their homework.
Until then, anything you really treasure, don’t want to share with any misfits should be done 100% offline. No electronic peripherals of any kind. Ever. (Be proud of the probable dossier you are building on a Utah server 
)
Unfortunately the only viable, online privacy solution for the masses is widescale adoption of Tor, .onion infrastructure and so on – but that is itself mostly a pipe dream with the apathetic public, 94% of whom are glued to a smartphone daily and shuffling around like zombies while patched into Facebook to catch up with the latest social media drivel…
In summary, Daniel’s probably right, but opensource shit tastes better than a corporate shit sandwich.