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The complaints about Takeout may have been overblown. I recall this hacker news thread about the problem, but people there are disagreeing with each other about the issue, and I've never personally used Google Photos so I don't know who to believe. Maybe there was something about EXIF data being stripped? And I recall there was also something about it being difficult to mass delete photos too, making it hard to get back under your storage limit without just wiping everything? That may also have been exaggerated, I don't know. Fair enough, I rescind that part of my description.
But while I understand why they did it, Google going from "you can upload unlimited photos!" to "your photos count against your limited storage quota" does illustrate that you're at the mercy of the provider when you use cloud services, and you need to have a plan for what to do if your prayers they do not alter the deal further ultimately fail.
I don't think it's so much that people think they're bad for that sole reason, and more that I think there are a lot of little reasons why people don't trust them to act in their best interests in the long term. I wouldn't advise anyone to swear off all big tech services without exception, but moreso to be judicious in how they use them and have an exit plan. The corporate version of this is "multi-cloud" or "hybrid-cloud," and it's growing for the same reasons I think people ought to carefully consider their consumer cloud strategy. It certainly saved Unisuper's skin in the story from the OP!
Google, in particular, I am just incredibly skeptical of because of their long history of killing off services people loved due to the management culture that disincentivizes maintaining existing products. I don't trust that anything Google does for consumers will exist in 10 years, except Search (though that one looks more concerning every day), GMail, YouTube, and Drive/Docs (because of its enterprise use). And hence those are the only Google services I use!
Further, I deactivated my Facebook account a long time ago not because of privacy concerns (though I have them) but because they enshittified the algorithm and force-fed me a bunch of toxoplasmosis-filled viral content that just made me angry, instead of the updates from friends and family I signed up to follow. They made the product worse to the point where the tradeoff in the data and attention I was giving them wasn't worth it, so I stopped using it.
Personally, of course, I love self-hosting things. But I certainly don't expect others to share in my self-hosting dreams, and I use third-party and cloud services to share data and communicate with other people.
I think there's an ideal balance to be struck with self-hosting, where you self-host services that are largely self-focused (personal notes, photo libraries, etc) and then judiciously use other services -- yes, even ones with terrible privacy practices! -- to mindfully share some of that data with others. The point is to be mindful, judicious, and self-aware of the choices you make, and weigh costs and benefits. Trying to get your friend to create a login for your nextcloud is decidedly not mindful, judicious, or self-aware, and when people talk about folks like that I make this face. Actually, publishing personal web services on the open internet just seems like an incredibly terrible idea to me, except in very specific circumstances.
The threat model for why people should consider self-hosting is decidedly not privacy from the government, which is a fool's errand. Nor is it, ultimately, privacy from data aggregation, which is almost certainly unavoidable, although I maintain it is a morally respectable stance to try to minimize your personal contribution to it, just as a vegetarian might choose to minimize their consumption of animal products because they oppose factory farming.
The point of self-hosting, for me, is not really about privacy but about control. The dream of the personal computer revolution was putting the power of computing in the hands of the everyday person, giving them autonomy over their own computing to use according to their wishes. I see self-hosting as an evolution of that dream.
People refusing to open menus from QR codes is another confused Nick Young moment for me. That seems to be a clear area in which using companies' web services makes perfect sense; you're at their establishment already and want to find something to eat. You don't, like, plug in your hopes and dreams into the menu website, you're just looking for the filet mignon. Now, I hate online menus, but not for any techy reason: I just find it a lot harder to browse a menu on a phone screen than on a piece of paper in front of me. In a lot of ways I actuallly want less tech in my life!
Abstinence-only in regard to third-party web services just isn't possible, as you say. You need to access services to communicate with people, just as you probably need a LinkedIn to advance your career (as much as I hate it...). What I don't like is the attitude that you should just mindlessly use every random cloud service that advertises itself to you without thinking about their incentives, privacy policy, reputation, and quality. People should make wise choices with their computing just as they do with their automobiles or houses. If anything, my total computing footprint is more important to me than either my car or my house, and certainly more irreplaceable. I don't think you can get an insurance policy to restore your precious thoughts and memories. That can definitely be an argument to use cloud storage, but I also think it's a good argument to use multiple offerings and not to put all your eggs in one basket.
Computers have done a lot to empower governments and corporations in modern times. My goal is just that they should also empower families and individuals too, while they're at it. Of course, the dark fear is that things turn out much more somber, and the Digital Society and its Future looks very much like a tiny elite running machines that rule the world. Not that we live in such a world, of course.
This seems like sufficient cause to refuse the QR code and ask for a paper version?
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