1) It has been like this for 10 years and it has been documented in plain sight. Also in this time frame user data has been progressively better protected. Data is better protected on Facebook now than it has even been. So why this outcry in 2018?

2) How does Apple protect 3rd party apps from collecting data? iOS apps even has the option of tracking your location - something that FB apps never had as far as I recall.

1) The perspective of "I have nothing to hide, I have no issue sharing all my data with FaceBook" has been very prevalent for a long time, as the consequences of that happening on a large scale are not obvious at a glance. It's a nuanced topic with too many variables. It takes a large enough event that can be (correctly or not) attributed to this in order to gain peoples attention. Foreign adversary potentially using this information and tooling to influence domestic elections is a large enough event to result in that coming to the public eye.

2) Facebook, Messenger and WhatsApp all have "Always" permissions options for Location Services on iOS. Instagram has "While using" or "Never" only. Wouldn't expect this to be substantially different on Android.

1) It's irrational. Facebook as an advertising platform is likely much more effective than what you will gain by crunching the limited data collected through apps. Googles advertising platform has other data points than Facebook but is equally potent in targeted marketing. However the biggest irrational hypocrisy in this shitstorm is that TV ads has always been known to be very effective in influencing elections yet no one has tweeted #deletetv.

2) Since Facebook, Messenger and WhatsApp are all 3rd party apps on Apple's platform, you just proved my point. Though I'm not sure you intented to?

You have to explicitly grant location permissions for every app individually, plus the iPhone warns you if an app is using your location in the background, plus gives you the option to only give the app your location while it's open.

So exactly like with Facebook apps, where you also grant permission for every app individually and have granular control over which data if any at all can be shared?

The feature where your iPhone is notifying which app is using your location is a recent feature in iOS. Remember than the current criticism of Facebook is related to how Facebook was doing things years ago. So we should also compare with early versions of iOS to be fair.