Ideally there would be more regulation around the ability of big tech companies to shutdown your digital life through a mindless algorithm, with close to zero recourse. Unfortunately I don’t see anything happening unless someone really powerful (say a member of Congress) gets bitten by this.
But it definitely needs more publicity. And if there is something that will bring down "big tech", I think that's it.
"cloud providers" should be treated like something that can fail. We already don't trust hard drives, that's why we have RAID, we don't even trust RAID arrays, that's why we have backups, and we don't trust the place where backups are stored, that's why we have off-site backups. Dropbox (and Microsoft, Google, etc...) is also not to be trusted, just like your hard drive can crash or your servers can catch fire, Dropbox can delete your data. It is not the same mechanism (one is a chemical reaction, the other is a mindless algorithm), but the end result is the same: you lose your data.
But once you take that into account, the value proposition of big cloud providers takes a hit. Often, big companies justify the premium price they ask with reliability. I mean, no one expects companies like Microsoft to go bankrupt anytime soon, and they certainly know about backups and redundancy, but what's the point if all it takes for your data to disappear is an artificial brain fart. Suddenly, the server in your basement doesn't look so bad in comparison, and neither are the smaller companies that actually have people you can talk to.
"Can fail" is certainly true, just like a hard drive can fail.
But we'd all be rightfully upset if someone at Western Digital decided to some to our home and proactively delete files from our HDD.
The whole concept of ToS needs to be overhauled with vast amounts of practice that is currently considered acceptable thrown right in the fucking trash.
The idea that companies can change their ToS on a whim every day and push out walls of text that no one reads and everyone clicks through is insane. Why can't we modify the terms of agreement?
Let's start with that law, all ToS interfaces must include an interface for users to upload their own modifications and companies must have a human interpret them (not some shitty 'ai') and decide to accept them in a reasonable time frame, and if the company chooses to decline them they cannot ban the user from the service for this, the last ToS that they accepted must be the one that their interaction with the customer is conducted under. The entire process must be auditable by other by both sides and a neutral third party.
I'm sick of big companies hiding behind an opaque wall of bullshit, if this was a small town dispute between two individuals this would be transparently settled one way or another and that's exactly how it should be on the internet.
The laws haven't kept up with the times, and they haven't kept up with the creative ways people with money try to fuck over those without.
> you have no rights
> you promise not to try and exercise any right you think you have
> you will not do anything the company doesn't like
> the company can do anything it wants whether you like it or not
> the company is not responsible for anything ever
> the company makes absolutely no guarantees about anything
Why not?
I think the real hurdle in adoption would be that most non-techies don't even register their dependence on big cloud providers as a problem yet. But I expect the day is coming. Similar to how Mastodon saw an influx of Twitter users when Musk announced he was intending to buy Twitter.