[j-j-j-j]

There is no feudalism without violence.

No one is forcing anyone to host stuff in the cloud, no one is forcing anyone to use Gmail, no one is forcing anyone to use iPhone or Android device, use Facebook or Twitter, etc.

Everybody does it because with their personal calculation they figured out they rather suffer some loss in freedom than spend time on alternatives.

There are just some good old fashion monopolies/oligopolies extracting as much value as they can. Without state forcing something (which is possible but currently does not seem to happen), there is no serfdom.

No one is using Apple laptops because they were forced at the gunpoint. They are just preferring longer battery life or whatever excuse over the ownership of their device and software. It's not a cage if the door is open and you're just too lazy to leave.

As a matter of fact FOSS alternatives are better than ever were, and hosting stuff outside of major clouds is also very convenient.

[greenhexagon]

> No one is forcing anyone to host stuff in the cloud, no one is forcing anyone to use Gmail

Contrast with: https://cfenollosa.com/blog/after-self-hosting-my-email-for-...

Even someone, with expert skills, decades of experience and the time, energy and willpower to try to do it on their own, can't.

[j-j-j-j]

Sure email became terribly centralized to the point of self-hosting being near impossible. Primarily because it's super old. But you can still use Protonmail or Fastmail. And email is less important as a communication platform than it ever was . Nowadays it feels like mostly an ID-verification system.

If things become bad enough - people will just use something else.

[Gud]

I switched to proton mail myself when Gandi.net started demanding money for my mailbox.

The problem with proton mail, that I later discovered after paying, is that they don’t support IMAP…

[mariusor]

> no feudalism without violence

Just because it's not physical violence it does not mean it doesn't exist. Violence was a means by the people with power to coerce the ones without. We have that today in the for of: debt, non equitable contracts, lobbying, etc.

[j-j-j-j]

Taking on debt or agreeing on contracts is voluntary (unless violence is used).

Lobbying could maybe be considered violence by proxy because state can use violence.

Violence has meaning, and trying to abuse it to put every single thing someone finds "unfair" under the umbrella of violence is ridiculous thing to do, and leads to all that idiots who start violence thinking that someone else's non-violent acts or even thoughts justify it.