Framing this as a moralized issue of “addiction” on the part of consumers naturalizes the structural cause of the problem. Concentrated wealth benefits from the cloud capital consumers generate. It’s this group that has most of the control over how our data is collected. These companies reduce the number and quality of choices available to us. Blaming consumers for choosing the many conveniences of cloud data when the incentive structure has been carefully tailored to funnel our data into their possession and control is truly a superficial take.
> Blaming consumers for choosing the many conveniences of cloud data when the incentive structure has been carefully tailored to funnel our data into their possession and control is truly a superficial take.
Couldn't have said it better.
Just consider Apple as an example: Some time ago, they used to sell the Time Capsule, a local-first NAS built for wireless Time Machine backups. Today, not only has the Time Capsule been discontinued, but it's outright impossible to make local backups of iOS devices (many people's primary computing devices!) without a computer and a USB cable.
Considering Apple's resources, it would take negligible effort to add a NAS backup feature to iOS with polished UX ("simply tap your phone on your Time Capsule 2.0 to pair it, P2P Wi-Fi faster than your old USB cable" etc.) – but they won't, because now it's all about "services": Why sell a Gigabyte once if you can lease it out and collect rent for it every month instead?
Well put. And generalizes to most consumer-blaming.
And this kind of consumer-blaming ultimately serves the interests of the very people who benefit most from the status quo, but shifting attention away from them and toward people who are easy to pick on but ultimately have very little control over the situation. For most people, opting out of the cloud is tantamount to opting out of modern society.
I can't even get important announcements from my kids' school without signing up for yet another cloud service.