We build roads; yes, those roads might be used to transport stolen goods but the road builder doesn’t get to sit there and inspect every vehicle (and accuse the wrong people sometimes and ban them from driving).
It’s just so damned complicated now and I don’t know how it got that way.
You can, I can (actually, I run my own file servers, even better).
Average person can't (won't even be aware they should). We could say let's educate people (yes, let's). But really, infrastructure should be neutrally available to everyone like roads or the old POTS network.
It can only be achieved through regulation, since these companies will always be self-serving at every step otherwise.
Only because you chose the wrong solution. ;-)
Look at Tresorit[1] instead.
It’s because cloud should have been just custodianship of the data in order to funnel it into their application but it was all too easy for these companies to want to profit further by prying on the data, monetising the data, curating the data and ultimately taking control away from the owner of the data.
Use of these consumer-grade cloud services comes with pitfalls. I see no utility in pretending that alternatives don't exist though, because they're pretty abundant.
Can you though? I would consider AWS "in the cloud" yet they will give you the boot if they disagree with you morally[0]. Same with Cloudflare[1].
So it seems even infrastructure-level cloud offerings are prone to moral arbitration. Hosting on your own hardware is the only option, but even then... I don't see any reason twitter mobs couldn't pressure Comcast or whoever is connecting your hardware to the internet to cut you off.
[0] https://telecoms.com/508138/aws-banning-of-parler-exposes-th...
[1] https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/
But this is probably not your best bet.
I don't think this is accurate. They pretty much only ban you if you're exposing them to legal liability.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/02/heres-what-an-ac...
I also don't think you would be arguing that people bothered about WhatsApp or iOS tracking them should just create their own messaging app or mobile OS. The vast majority of software is not just difficult do yourself, but almost completely infeasible. In fact it's hard to even think of any software I use regularly which I as a experienced software engineer could easily build myself, let alone an average user concerned about this stuff...
You're totally right. Depending on one's standards and expertise, yes, there are alternatives to the mainstream dumping grounds for your files.
The most basic is to just store files on external drives. This is what I do because, most of the time, I'm not actively sharing or using all my photos and downloads. I've scattered them between drives for well over a decade and only had a problem when one of my magnetic drives began to fail, but I ended up not losing anything. Even if I lost all my photos and stuff I really wouldn't care that much. That's why I can't be arsed to trust The Google or Zuckerborg or whomever with my files or using Dropbox. I'm more likely to wake up one day to be hard locked out of all my Google accounts than to lose anything meaningful because of physical on-premises storage.
There's also network drives, and plenty of off-the-shelf ones exist. My parents have one and it's exactly what you'd think; a device with a ton of storage that's accessible through a Dropbox-like web interface.
And if you're really geeky, you can hack together a way to shove files into S3 or whatever storage service of choice.
Yes, the average person won't have the motivation or wherewithal to do anything besides my first option, but that's really the kind of thing you'll always get by being average.
And obviously those who believe they need all the bells and whistles of Dropbox or Google Drive may also believe there are no practical alternatives outside of Silicon Valley Big Tech, in which case it's entirely up to them how comfortable they are with that. Personally, I would rather rely on services as little as possible.