The ironic part is that people have just become accustomed to (or ignorant of) the way data is gathered from your average Android phone. Everyone is upset about Win10, but little attention is given to Android and the associated ecosystem of apps.

Not quite. I do expect more respect for my privacy from my computer OS than I expect from my smart phone OS. My personal computer holds way more sensitive and important information than my smartphone.

That won't be true for everyone. Why should we just accept less privacy?

They are:

1. Install an AOSP ROM without the proprietary Google Apps or Google Play Services.

2. Install the F-Droid market to download whatever programs you like.

3. Enjoy using an Android phone without the anti-privacy Google tracking.

Your point 1. is like saying

1. Turn off every Windows feature mentioned in this article.

Installing an AOSP ROM is an order of magnitude harder than disabling the privacy-concerning settings in Windows considering that you probably would need to extract (or write your own) drivers from the vendor-customized ROM.

Unfortunately 90% of useful apps aren't on F-Droid.

That's just your opinion. 90% of the apps in Google play are junk that don't respect user rights or privacy.

I'm perfectly content using only the apps available in F-Droid, and have been for years.

my android phone has one play store app (Timely). The rest is software from F-Droid. my phone is my business lifeline.

Exactly, you don't even need to configure an account/email with an online service to use your phone if you go this route.

Step 1: Uninstall everything related to Google.

Step 2: ???

Step 3: Profit