I am also german. Of course not everyone here cares about privacy, but in average much more people than in other countries I would say. But the "average german" uses FB and WhatsApp. However, many like me never had them installed.

I think it's because of our recent history full of spying secret services (Nazis and east germany) and the education in family and in school about the history. My family is from East germany. The stasi (east german secret service) observed everyone they could with hidden microphones in private rooms, reading your lettters, force your friends to spy on you etc. So the people that raised me are very aware of spying... From my grandparents and parents stories I cared about privacy from the beginning. My parents also used Linux since I remember them using computers and gave us phones with lineage etc.. ...

Of course we do, but for example we use nicknames on Facebook and our government shot down the real name verification they were pushing.

Data privacy acts are actually enforced, and most users are at least somewhat informed about GDPR and their rights.

Meta is not allowed to link facebook and whatsapp user data to get around that, so the data gathered within whatsapp is not nearly as powerful as the connection between the two would be (three, if you count Instagram), etc. etc.