Well, don't use Gmail, or use a domain that you can move to any provider and keep a backup of you're email.
If you put yourself in a place where someone can take everything from you than it's a real risk that they might.
If you put yourself in a place where someone can take everything from you than it's a real risk that they might.
And which ones are those? Once I've selected the right provider, how do I reliably implement my backups?
> If you put yourself in a place where someone can take everything from you than it's a real risk that they might.
I'll just go ahead and stop using every major software product created in the last decade.
Despite my sarcasm you're not wrong, I agree completely with what you're saying. But to follow your advice is not easy, especially for the average user. IMO it's a problem with the way software is made, and while many of us are vaguely aware of the problem, there's been little progress towards solving it.
The reason progress isn't made is _because_ the casual experience is so good. Gmail works very well, at least the average (read: compliant) user. Therefore, the system is designed so that it works well for said average user, and so they do not have any incentive to pay for a more "difficult" to use product, which enhances an aspect that they don't care (or know to care) about. That is, until they get hit by an issue (after all, you're average until you're not). But since their numbers are still overwhelmingly small, there's also no political arena for which this can become legislated to make it work.
The average user doesn't even use an adblocker, so they won't need to worry about Google blocking their account for suspected clickfraud or whatever.
Is that more than someone might think of? Maybe, but it's not that far fetched if it's something you want to do.
What's hard to get a normal person to do is distrust Google or Facebook et. al.
Edit to point out that normal people who are marginalized by society actually know about this stuff and already do things like this, like having pre-warmed backup accounts on social media platforms avoiding most major banking platforms or diversifying payments platforms to limit impact and hosting their own websites.
There are a lot of simple things you can do to become less dependent and people who tent to find themselves in those places can seek these things out.
This is true, but it's a lot harder to piss of a registrar than someone like google that has its fingers in all sorts of pies. Your registrar doesn't necessarily care if you're running and ad blocker or if Google thinks your account should be suspendeded because they don't like your app in the play store.
> If you put yourself in a place where someone can take everything from you than it's a real risk that they might.
You're exactly right, but absolutely wrong. We've had this conversation about creep for a few decades but it still happened. It is technically possible to live in the modern world without the internet and a cell phone, but it is not a realistic expectation. In fact, removing even one of the tech giants from your life results in a considerable disruption of your life[0].
You're right that people need to make individual choices, but you are missing the fact that a collection of people making choices is called a society. Those decisions have been made by our less tech literate friends and family. The ones we've failed to educate, using our expertise to inform those that are not in the domain. To fail to learn to effectively communicate and warn of the real dangers of what is happening. The truth is that no matter what decisions we make, we are still subject to the decisions of our society. Saying "you should have made better choices" is simply victim blaming. Unless you have been a hermit for the last 30 years and plan to continue this route -- clearly you're not since you're reading this -- then your individual choices were simply not enough. There is a larger game at play and you are still subject to society if you wish to participate. And let's be real, not participating comes with dire consequences and a complete abandonment of much of what it means to be human. So that's not a realistic choice or expectation. We need to think deeper, as its the only way we can solve this problem. It's easy to be dismissive and come to simple conclusions that make a nice pretty bow, but our world is incredibly complex and nothing is as simple as it appears. Anything you think is simple is simply something you do not understand sufficiently.
It is not too late, it never will be. But it is like planting a tree: the best time was 20 years ago but the second best is now. The effects compound, in both directions. So I'll repeat what I've been trying to for most of my life, we need to make meaningful action and stop this spying. The will only control more of our lives if we continue this route and a "high tech-low life" future isn't an unlikely outcome. It's far more likely than seeing AGI, and AGI could only accelerate such a trajectory (it similarly could liberate us, which is why I research it. But there is real danger and we must not hide that fact)
[0] https://gizmodo.com/i-cut-the-big-five-tech-giants-from-my-l...
> Background noise in general disappears this week because YouTube, Apple Music, and our Echo are all banned—as are Netflix, Spotify, and Hulu, because they rely on AWS and the Google Cloud to get their content to users.
Now, if you eliminate AWS, Azure and Google Cloud from your life, you could turn on the Airplane mode as well as the public cloud powers up a large part of today's web, either directly or as a dependency. But there is a ton of difference between using Google's services and visiting a website powered by GCP.