It is not that simple. I do not use it. Yet someone can upload an image I send them, or my photograph without my knowledge. It needs to be strictly regulated.
You don't need to look to the future. We already have p2p solutions and encryption that if hacked together could serve as some sort of decentralised storage. The public doesn't use it.
Had. Torrent is mostly banned at ISP level.
> The public doesn't use it.
They will if there is no alternative. The public uses email because there was no WhatsApp in 1989.
The public doesn't use it because it hasn't been hacked together and that for all intents and purpose the experience has more friction than what is available today.
One of the first things we teach people is, that once a picture is on the net, it will never be deleted.
And, secondly, nowadays the web is a lot more crowded, all the less technically minded people go online with a very sparse understanding of the web. Early adopters had a different demographic than the current userbase.
The less tech minded usually do what the more tech minded tell them. The problem is we 've lulled people with "security", green lock icons. We all know that all security is temporary, but we also chose to appeal to people's natural need for safety. The point is even the best digital security measure is nowhere near good old physical security.
And the current legal debate and regulations about it are long overdue.
The world where regulations can prevent that would be so creepy dystopian, that it wouldn't even need humans anymore.
Is it dystopian to regulate that sites cannot host and distribute pedophile content for instance ? Regulations are needed, in the internet as much as anywhere else.
Yes, this is exactly dystopian.
So, the school photographer comes. It's the usual think where they make pictures, and you can order some copies. This year they only made class photos. They send you some link where you can log in to see a watermarked version of the photo, you can then order a digital copy or a printed copy.
However, they also put a Facebook share link on the page where people can share the class photo with one click. I am sure there are a lot of parents who do not even think about the rights and wishes of other parents and just share the photo.
So, we are in a bad situation where we explicitly disallow people to upload photos of our daughter, but not can people upload pictures anyway against our wishes, companies are actively pushing people to do so.
All the tracking and unwanted uploads of personal information (though friends' address books), photos, etc. without any explicit permission is a disgrace. I hope that the EU keeps hitting these companies with the GDPR until they respect people's privacy. Sure, if you decide to share your life with Google, Facebook, and a countless tracking companies, that's up to you. But this unwanted slurping of every bit of information has to end.