[sbuttgereit]

Not to address the author of the article specifically, but only all readers generally....

I would suggest that the moment you chose to have a critical dependency on someone else's services, it becomes incumbent on you to have a disaster recovery plan should that service suddenly become unavailable to you. How formal or intense such a plan is may depend on if you're an individual or a small/mid-sized business that's too small to command the respect of your vendor in the event of a problem (real or imagined on the part of the vendor). You have to take a defensive approach to these relationships even if part of the reason you buy these services is not to worry about such issues: you may have moved and transformed what you have to worry about, but you have not freed yourself from any worry.

We can hand-wave that away muttering about, "most people won't understand"... but at the end of the day it's the modern, connected world we live in and failing to be properly educated about that world is fraught with peril. Those that respect that reality will do better than those that don't.

[causal]

You are right that this is wise, but it's too much to ask the average user to do. At least in the US, most people lack the technical literacy to do anything but depend on big tech.

What we really need is legislation to regulate big tech services as the utilities they really are.

[mafuy]

That we can just rely on some basic, useful properties is, in my mind, one of the key differences to "third world countries". I don't need to check if my tap water has lead in it because I know that I won't, so I can use this time more effectively to "increase the GDP". I've lived in Vietnam for a year and learned there how impactful these guarantees can be. It is absolutely possible to deal with the problems, but especially in sum it wastes a lot of time and money.

In the west, I should not need to check that my utility or email provider is trying to screw me over. I should be able to rely on clean water coming out of the tap all the time, with minimal effort (paying fair bills) on my part.

The provider cannot claim that is would be too expensive, or that it would scale worse - that's a solvable problem. If it is more expensive, then that's the true cost that just has to be paid. Yes, the company cannot just dump your waste in the river. Yes, the company cannot just deactivate an email account with sending a paper letter.

[Aachen]

> I should be able to rely on clean water coming out of the tap all the time, with minimal effort (paying fair bills) on my part. [...] If it is more expensive, then that's the true cost that just has to be paid.

Thankfully all these tech products are services you can pay for to be reliable!

It's an interesting perspective to compare the different economies, but the pain point isn't so much classic products you pay for but the ones you rely on without having any say about your access because you're the product being sold. Being the product means Google etc. need to make it work for 98% of the people, the default cases, because otherwise they lose a lot of people that could have made them money (from app developers' transaction cuts, advertisers paying for impressions, etc.) as well as to prevent that a competitor can easily do better, but it doesn't mean they lose sleep over losing your custom specifically. It's not tied to any tangible amount

An individual's value is very variable, especially when they try to avoid a dependency on these tech products and essentially only cost money because they make minimal use of it. People like me are the easiest to cut off, and that's where a society's dependency hurts: I am not here by choice, I actually need this (e.g. a transport app from an app store to buy tickets or unlock vehicles or request rides: I need at least one of these to reasonably get around in a city and there is no alternative)

[fermigier]

"it becomes incumbent on you to have a disaster recovery plan should that service suddenly become unavailable to you." -> It's already hard when you are a seasoned IT professional. I don't know a single person in my family who has the faintest idea where to start, even if I've lectured them several times on this topic.

[em-bee]

the only protection against losing a phone number is to have a second phone number and alternative communication channels. with friends and family that works just fine. with businesses it doesn't. most of them only allow me to specify one number. and if they use that for 2FA, you may be stuck if the number is lost.

[lazyeye]

Google is unique in how badly they treat their customers.

Would any other provider take away your number without explanation, nor allow you to talk to a human?

At a minimum, Google needs to be regulated.

[pixl97]

Yet this is a somewhat backwards way to think if you want society to work. You don't put in 6 hours a day in your own garden to ensure backup food exists, right? Instead we set up systems of regulation and production to ensure we can Instead focus on our own specialization.

[Aachen]

There's more than one store, and more than one payment method. If all else fails, it's easy to borrow/share, and succesful purchases can last a little while. There's redundancies and async operations throughout

If you need to receive a call to a particular number, it having a(n indefinite) disruption can mean you're going to have a bad day. Tech products aren't as mature as e.g. money and food

[mitthrowaway2]

I understand the philosophy of where you're coming from, but I think it is blind to an important dynamic. This isn't just a matter of freely choosing to depend on someone else's service, take-it-or-leave-it. We live in a world of two-sided markets, where the mere existence of a popular service starts to reshape the world, altering the choices available to you.

In 1999, you could freely choose not to have a cellphone, because payphones were abundant. As cellphones became more popular, payphones disappeared; meanwhile, other services such as banks began to require you to have a number that could receive SMS messages. As smartphones reached mass adoption, it became a safe assumption that most people could access an android or iphone app, and support for other paths (such as a web browser) began to decrease, even for essential services.

I can freely choose to watch videos on YouTube or not, and freely refuse to do so if I don't like it. But I also realize that by YouTube merely existing and being popular, it creates a gravity well. Creators stay on YouTube because their audiences are there, and viewers stay there because the channels they follow are there. By merely existing, the oxygen available to other potential services that I could freely choose is reduced.

I can choose not to drive a car, but the choice of many other people to drive cars results in roads, services, and cities designed to meet their needs, rather than mine. This reduces my freedom to opt out of car ownership. And if McDonalds didn't offer a car-only 24-hour drive-thru, there would be unmet demand by hungry people late at night that might provide enough business for another company to open a 24-hour cafe. As it is, McDonalds services enough of that demand, and if the non-drivers have no midnight food options, it's their fault for being too small of a market to be worthwhile.

The dynamics of these gravity wells is important to acknowledge, and I think it does create a responsibility on the operators of these services to their customers beyond that of someone freely using their service by uncompelled choice. Because they are, to some degree compelled, and the compulsion comes from the existence of that service removing oxygen from the competitors that would have otherwise appeared to meet those needs. The model of "I'm voluntarily offering you a service that you otherwise wouldn't have had; it's my right to simply choose to stop offering it to you" is too simple.

(Edit: But practically speaking, I do think what you say is good advice and I don't disagree with it. I'm only objecting to the moral philosophy behind it. Kind of like I agree that pedestrians should wear bright clothing and reflective stripes to avoid getting hit by cars at night, even though it's the drivers' moral responsibility to not hit those pedestrians).