You're talking about two completely different categories of problem.
Companies polluting waterways is an externality. Many customers prefer the company that doesn't spend money abating pollution, because it allows them to have lower prices. To address that you need some kind of rule against polluting, or a property right by the people downstream to not have toxins dumped in their river.
The problems with tech companies are rooted in a lack of effective competition. If there was a company that provided the exact same services as Google or Apple except that it respected your privacy better or had lower prices or didn't leverage their platforms into monopolizing ancillary markets, customers would choose that in the market. The people being negatively impacted by their behavior are their own users, which means that all you have to do is make a better alternative available and that alternative would win out in the market. Which means that in this context, any rules that impede new competitors are counterproductive, as are the existing rules that caused the lack of effective competition to begin with.
I'd rather imperfect regulation and tweaking lobbying rules than toxic waterways etc.