The problem, says bestselling pseudonymous author Chuck Tingle, is that companies like Google now function like utilities. “It’s the same as water and electric,” he says.

That’s one problem, yeah. The other problem, though, is that they don’t function like utilities.

These big tech companies do see extra regulations, because they’re often monopolies and many people feel forced to use their services in order to participate in society.
At the same time, for that same reason, actual utilities typically have a right attached, for all citizens to be able to use them.

If your water supplier kind of thinks you might be using the water to flood your neighbor’s garden, they can’t just cut you off from service. They’d need to sue you and you’d be allowed a fair trial, and frankly, you’d go to prison at most, where you still have tap water.

Our regulation of these tech companies is lagging behind. I feel like the main hindrance is that we’re trying to regulate international companies with national laws.

It’s hard to believe that anyone still needs to be reminded to keep offline backups.

There are alternatives to Google that are as good or better. Skiff comes to mind, but there are also others.

The writer uses the terms “locked out” and “frozen”, but also says that she is not allowed to share documents any longer and maybe unable to access her documents from a tablet and a phone, but perhaps still from a laptop? (The article reads like a fucken drama piece instead of… you know… actual journalism).

If she has any type of access, it seems like it is very easy to fix permanently:

• Download documents.
• Register a domain.
• Get a hosted Wordpress or some other foolproof CMS.
• Put documents there.

Don’t rely on a free service for something that has value you.

“Can’t share item,” was the header. “You cannot share this item because it has been flagged as inappropriate,” read the body text.

FAFO.

We’ve been fanfaring for a decade and a fucking half for people not to see “the cloud” as a miracle solution, and to use it carefully. We’ve been warning that it is a blatant invitation to vendor lock in, that it is singlehandedly creating oligopolies, and that exactly this would happen.

Did people listen? No. Did they aggressively confront (or passive-aggressively ostracise) us? You bet your bottom dollar they did.

And now? Now they come around with surprised_pika.gif faces and whine to whoever listens that they are victims, and that they couldn’t “possibly have seen this coming”.

No. They are enablers of abusers, they themselves abused anyone with even a modicum of common sense, and they brought this upon themselves a thousand times over.

FAFO. And at this point, reading such story fills me with the most powerful schadenfreude I have ever experienced.