Saying users shouldn't trust the Cloud is absolutely correct. That's not what you said to start with though. You said "I don't get the problem". The problem is that people are getting, in your words, "screwed" by unilateral changes to ToS and privacy agreements because they have been duped into trusting cloud services. The vast majority of WhatsApp users have never heard of Richard Stallman, never mind read his essays on cloud computing.
This isn't just about WhatsApp. Just about every Cloud service ToS ever written contains the provision to "change the ToS anytime they want and however they want ". People have a (probably ill-founded) expectation that those changes will be fairly reasonable. By pushing things to the legal limit (and beyond) WhatsApp is poisoning the well for everybody else.
You have to appreciate that if users no longer have any trust in the cloud then half the readers of this site are going to be out of a job. You think all the people who attend your React.js conferences are working on open source projects that the users install on hardware that they control? I very much doubt it.
If you think Stallman is right then surely you should be spreading this example of his correctness to as many people as possible so that they find out about it. But the impression I get from your posts is that you'd rather people weren't talking about it at all.
Personally I hope that more Cloud services blatantly piss off their users in this way, because I want the entire idea of cloud services to be discredited. And yes that means that I'm hoping Patrick Aljord doesn't have cloud startup devs paying to attend his javascript conferences anymore.
> The vast majority of WhatsApp users have never heard of Richard Stallman, never mind read his essays on cloud computing.
I agree, but the problem here is ignorance. Ignorant people are always going to get screwed, that's why we should fight ignorance and educate users. Fighting people taking advantage of this ignorance is just fighting the symptoms of the real problem that is ignorance, it is also a losing battle. So, I prefer spending time educating people about these issues rather than attacking whatsapp, facebook and other apps they love as this just makes us look grumpy. I think it's ok to use the cloud as long as you're aware nothing you put in there won't be spied on unless you encrypt _before_ uploading it to the cloud (end to end), then you should be ok. So either don't put anything too personal on the cloud or encrypt it before hand is the advice I give.
This isn't just about WhatsApp. Just about every Cloud service ToS ever written contains the provision to "change the ToS anytime they want and however they want ". People have a (probably ill-founded) expectation that those changes will be fairly reasonable. By pushing things to the legal limit (and beyond) WhatsApp is poisoning the well for everybody else.
You have to appreciate that if users no longer have any trust in the cloud then half the readers of this site are going to be out of a job. You think all the people who attend your React.js conferences are working on open source projects that the users install on hardware that they control? I very much doubt it.
If you think Stallman is right then surely you should be spreading this example of his correctness to as many people as possible so that they find out about it. But the impression I get from your posts is that you'd rather people weren't talking about it at all.
Personally I hope that more Cloud services blatantly piss off their users in this way, because I want the entire idea of cloud services to be discredited. And yes that means that I'm hoping Patrick Aljord doesn't have cloud startup devs paying to attend his javascript conferences anymore.