On devices I use personally I haven’t encountered such examples for years, because the first thing I do is substitute first-party apps with FOSS alternatives. My mom does however, and her Samsung’s camera app for example, won’t function unless you give it permission to scan for nearby devices; among others, which I can’t fully remember. So the stock Android experience seems similar to what you’re describing for iOS.

Last time I removed malware from my grandma’s smartphone, I made sure to install Signal to it. Sometimes you just got to demonstrate to them how low impact a change is. Many elderly are frightened by the idea that their experience changes, on a device they depend on but hardly understand. So demonstrate, rather than trying to convince them of something they fail to understand. The worst that can happen is that they tell you to remove it again, but in case of my grandma, she comfortably uses Signal. Just make sure you send some example messages back and forth, so they understand how similar the workflow is.

I never give apps I distrust permission to my photos, I instead select the photos in my gallery app and share them with the app. And as a side note, many users have cloud backups enabled, whether intentionally or accidentally (having clicked “accept” once, instead of “ask me later”); so big-tech likely stores a copy of the actual pictures, and depending on how lackluster the defaults are regarding privacy, have full access to it.

I really can’t stand the “Not now”, where “services” (including Google’s backup service) prey on the user accidentally agreeing one day.