trust no cloud

i don't like how everything these days has to be some kind of service. half the time you're expected to pay some sort of monthly fee to access it, not to mention that at any second they could simply ban you anyways if some AI looks at a post wrong.

of course, you can simply try to avoid using such services entirely. you can avoid cloud storage and cloud computing simply by using your own machine to do those things — if you're willing to spare the initial cost to buy the hardware needed, of course — and you can avoid media streaming services by buying physical media instead. even social media and chat apps can be self-hosted to a degree, but you probably won't convince everyone in your life to use those with you…

in response to these conditions, i find it is only justified to treat online services — when they are still needed — as temporary and disposable. for chat apps, ensure you keep contact with anyone you care about across multiple services. with cloud storage, keep important data stored locally. never trust a single service to be reliable or immutable, and assume that any day you might just lose access to it. maybe you'll get banned, maybe the company will axe the service, or maybe they'll just go bankrupt! having options at the ready might just save you one day, if you're willing to prepare yourself now.