Avoidance of services owned by monoliths...explained.

Discussion in 'Serious Discussion' started by smallhagrid, Nov 3, 2020.

  1. smallhagrid

    smallhagrid MDL Addicted

    Sep 14, 2013
    608
    445
    30
    #1 smallhagrid, Nov 3, 2020
    Last edited: Nov 3, 2020
    Years & years ago I began learning (in hard ways, of course) what could happen if I placed too much trust in web based entities.
    As time has passed, I've used such services less and less, having learned not only what CAN happen, but via what HAS happened to myself and others.

    'Free' services are the prime example generally because if the user does not provide any direct profits to the provider(s), then the user IS the product & the provider's profits come via USING their users somehow.

    An entire range of offerings like this exist, small and large - many are in the SAAS category, and offer 'free' services (for example: file conversion via site) so that they can display lots of ads in the aims of profiting thereby.

    Others with vastly greater computing power & wealth at their disposal, offer some best-in-class services at no charge - whilst making the fullest uses of their user's data quite unabashedly - gmail is perhaps the best example of this with a huge number of users.

    Just to be clear & open in my own disclosures here:
    - I do use gmail and IMO it has the best spam filtering of any free service built right into it;
    - It is also NOT used exclusively as I do have other, more private options as well.

    Today an article about this came to my attention (as well as having a need to explain this at another thread here).

    That article is here:
    https://www.businessinsider.com/google-users-locked-out-after-years-2020-10

    Some bullet points from it:

    • Entrusting your data to big tech platforms can be highly risky.
    • Users who have been banned by Google for supposedly violating its terms of service have been left without access to key parts of their lives.
    • Many have appealed the suspensions but have received automated responses.
    • They don't know why they've been banned. "This is just how life is when you're dealing with trillion-dollar faceless corporations," said Aral Balkan.
    With regard to the 1st point in that list - especially when it comes to web hosting as well as pretty much any sort of SAAS that one may wish to depend upon - such things can simply dry up & blow away with zero warning.

    This is especially true when any SAAS is offered by IMers whose 'business plan' is to make the offering ONLY as long as gaining many new subscribers meets their profit goals.
    Sadly, the day that this is no longer true & they find that they may have to cover their operating overhead costs - they simply pull the plug.
    (And that doesn't even relate with all the data such scoundrels collect silently from their user's accounts...)
    One of the very popular sales pitches for such services is to offer them for a 'lifetime' - and most who get sucked into such too-good-to-be-true offers never notice that 'lifetime' can easily mean only the amount of time the IMers wish to keep it open...as the term is not defined in the offers.

    Back to that article:
    It is (IMO) a worthwhile read for warning purposes.
    (I am not in any way connected with its author, BTW.)