[blfr]

I use neither Facebook nor Apple. Let's hope Google doesn't ban my account since it has everything.

Or perhaps we could have a regulatory regime that doesn't press every consumer into becoming an e-peasant of one of five mega corps.

[ryandrake]

All three of you seem to have the same general problem, just the company name is different. No single account should gate access to _everything_ in your digital life. If getting banned from one company's platform would be a major problem for you, that probably means you should take steps to correct that now, no matter what the company is.

If Facebook or Twitter banned me, it would have zero effect, because I don't ever use any of the services. If Apple banned me, it would be annoying, but I'm not heavily dependent on iCloud, so could switch to an Android phone pretty quickly. I certainly don't keep anything critical on iCloud or locked behind Apple services. If Google banned me, I'd lose an old gmail account I no longer use and I guess Google Voice, which I do use. Honestly losing Voice would probably be the most painful. I don't use any other Google service that requires a login so it wouldn't be a huge deal.

We keep seeing these "XYZ banned me and I lost access to all my digital life" posts on HN, and they should be wake-up calls, yet people still think It Won't Happen To Me, and then we get another "ABC banned me..." article next week.

[blfr]

I have backups from Google Takeout, email in my own domain, and I use Linux on my laptop. I'm about as independent as you reasonably can but let's not pretend I could actually easily replace Google Photos, Maps, or Android. That grade of software simply doesn't currently exist outside of the big tech.

More than that: Photos+Maps+Timeline combo doesn't even exist at Apple. Google is strictly far and the best choice for quite a few functionalities I cherish and a move to iCloud would be a downgrade. Not to mention the expense of buying new devices.

I wouldn't really lose access to anything but my digital life would be greatly diminished.

[sbf501]

Yep. There needs to be a policy for data rights that is larger than the companies. Something government level.

[b112]

I recall that scifi from the pre-2000s, had loads of scenarios with a "house computer". All personal stuff was stored there, even if it was net connnected and collated/performed searches for you.

Maybe this will be the blowback reality. An applicance in every home, stored in a black box (fireproof, etc), which stores all your stuff.

Computing at this level, email, notes, personal records, has the capacity to stabilize and change freeze. Which is good, if you want personal records to last 100 years.

And looking at email, mbox formats have been static for decades. Static image formats too.

[justinclift]

> Maybe this will be the blowback reality.

Wonder how that'd play out for home ownership vs renting then. "Whose data is it?", etc. ;)

[rambambram]

Just like your couch in your rental apartment is yours, and just like your raincoat in the trunk of a rental car is yours. ;)

[b112]

I used to rent a place, furniture included, but everything smelled funny.

Later in the year, during rainy season, I bought a used raincoat. It too smelled funny, and I soon discovered, by googling, that apparently people with a rubber fetish may do things to such garments.

Horrible horrible things.

Soon after, I became concerned about my smelly apartment. I started to google, but everything I googled with the word "fetish", returned unspeakable results.

Each worse than the last!

So I bought new furniture, bedding, cutlery(oh god!), plates, everything.

Even toilet brushes are not safe from the horrors, so I bought one of those too.

One night, I woke up in a start. An idea was in my head, and I rushed to google, and horribly found that factory workers making my stuff, have fetishes too.

Nothing safe, I disposed of it all. I got out my chainsaw, and cut down a tree. I made plates, cutlery, even a wooden cup! And ate off of these plates and so on. However, just last week, I noticed a squirrel apparently randy and without a mate, doing something to a tree!!

There is no end of the perversion I tell you, no end!!!

So now I sit in the corner, drool upon my chin, eyes glassy and void of energy.

(Brought to you by bbarnett's house, and the embarricon virus.)

[sbarre]

Hah you just reminded me of something...

In the late 80s as a kid I remember reading a scifi short story from probably the 1950s that speculated that "in the future" the average suburban family would live inside their computer, as it would need to be the size of a house to perform all the support duties for a family.

[int_19h]

There are some attempts:

https://thehelm.com/

The problem is that it's not cheap to keep running, if you want it to integrate with the rest of the Net (i.e. also handle email and such).