The Frustration of Managing Personal Data in the Digital Age

As I recently made the switch to Oneplus and started adding more people to my photo albums, I couldn't help but feel frustrated with the lack of clarity around data management. With the rise of shared photo albums and social network gathering, I've come to realize that I'm not alone in this sentiment. It seems like many of us are caught in a cycle of managing our personal data, constantly thinking about where it's going to be stored and how much we're paying for it.

I used to think that the cloud was a game-changer, freeing me from the hassle of managing my own storage space. But now, with the abundance of free storage offered by services like Google, I'm starting to feel like I've been sold a bill of goods. For too long, I've been lulled into a false sense of security, thinking that because I was paying for a service, I didn't have to worry about my data. But now, with the rise of shared photo albums and social media, I'm starting to feel like I need to think about data management all over again.

The problem is that many companies, including Google, are using our data to build their systems and algorithms, without making it clear what happens to this data after we sign up for a service. It's like having physical stuff and having to move storage sheds - it's time-consuming and frustrating. As someone who has invested a significant amount of time and effort into building a personal photo library, I feel like I've been taken for granted. Why should I have to think about data management all over again? Can't companies just make it clear what they're offering and what they're using my data for?

I recently remembered how much I used to worry about managing local hard drives, but the cloud has instilled a sense of confidence and luxury that's made me forget about these concerns. However, now that I'm giving more and more money to Google, I'm starting to realize that this could be the status quo for anything else that I sign up for in this ecosystem. Why should I have to pay for data storage? Can't companies just make it clear what they're offering and what they're using my data for?

When I compare this experience to Apple's iCloud storage, I'm struck by how much more upfront and transparent they are. When you sign up for iCloud, you know exactly what you're getting - 5 gigs of free storage, with the option to upgrade if needed. Google, on the other hand, offers 15 gigs of free storage, but doesn't make it clear that this is just a test bed for their more premium services.

As I think about my own data and how it's growing exponentially, I'm starting to feel like I need to take control of this situation. I don't want to be caught in the cycle of managing my personal data, constantly thinking about where it's going to be stored and how much I'm paying for it. It's time to hit the stop button and reclaim my data - I want to know exactly what I'm getting, and what I'm paying for.

This is a call to action, not just for myself, but for all of us who are caught in this cycle of data management. We need to start thinking about how we're using our personal data, and how companies are using it too. We need to demand more transparency and clarity around data storage and management. It's time to take back control of my own data, and I hope that others will join me on this journey.

The Stop Button: Taking Back Control of Personal Data

As I look at the options available to me when it comes to managing my personal data, I'm starting to feel like we've been sold a bill of goods. We've been given free storage by companies like Google, and we've lapped up it without thinking twice. But now, as I start to realize what's going on behind the scenes, I want to take back control.

I remember how much I used to worry about managing local hard drives, but the cloud has instilled a sense of confidence that's made me forget about these concerns. However, now that I'm giving more and more money to Google, I'm starting to realize that this could be the status quo for anything else that I sign up for in this ecosystem.

Why should I have to think about data management all over again? Can't companies just make it clear what they're offering and what they're using my data for? It's time to hit the stop button, not on social media or email services, but on the entire concept of free data storage. We need to start thinking about how we're using our personal data, and how companies are using it too.

I'm calling on all of us to take control of our data, and demand more transparency and clarity around data storage and management. It's time to stop being lulled into a false sense of security by free data storage services, and start thinking about what we're really getting. We need to ask ourselves - what happens to my data after I sign up for a service? What are the terms and conditions? And most importantly, what do I get in return?

The Stop Button is not just a metaphorical button, it's a call to action. It's time to take back control of our personal data, and start making informed decisions about how we're using it. We need to stop trusting companies with our data, and start demanding more transparency and accountability.

By taking the stop button approach, we can start to break free from the cycle of data management that's been holding us back. We can start to think about what we want, and what we're willing to pay for. We can start to make informed decisions about how we're using our personal data, and demand more transparency and clarity around data storage and management.

It's time to take control of our data, and start making a change. The stop button is just the beginning - it's time to hit the reset button on our entire approach to personal data management.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis is twit all right so this was big news i saw a lot of people uh getting in on this one google photos is gonna stop offering free unlimited storage to users photos uploads will begin charging for any storage space beyond the 15 gigs of free storage that's included with google accounts these changes actually take place on june 1st 2021 so anything uploaded before june 1st in high quality will still not count against the 15 gigs of default drive storage current pixel owners because pixel owners were you know have since i think since day one with google photos been the recipients of free storage be it original storage original quality but that free storage went away a couple of years ago but still maintain the high quality storage they're going to continue we are going to continue to get unlimited free uploads if using high quality however future pixel devices it's been confirmed i will not support uh any of those free uploads so kind of the gravy train ends with the pixel 5 i think as far as that's concerned um so what was what was funny was my my wife got the email from google about this and was like oh google's gonna start charging for google photos it's like not for me and i completely dismissed it and then like an hour later i got the email i was like oh wait a minute this is something this is something that's happening yep yep um but i am on google one my legacy gmail account uh that is not public um that i've been on since since back in the beta days ran out of space and so i was forced to go into google one so i'm already paying that so like and that's what my google photos account is associated with so like i'm good i think and i'm a pixel launcher yeah i mean you're you're good right you're good until you decide to i suppose upgrade to a newer pixel at which time all of your photos whether they're high quality or unlim or original quality will count against your storage space and even then you're still good until you run out of space in your google one account you have to upgrade to the next tier right which which yeah which i let me uh let me do a check to see where i'm at with that but uh i think i'm gonna be okay uh um burke just highlighted google one pricing is not changing that's true i mean and the pricing is pretty reasonable if you're well it's pretty pretty reasonable all around i'm on the 200 gig google one plan so that's 299 a month and yeah the way i figure like for 299 for backing up a bunch of my data to the cloud and not having to stress about it like i'm cool with that um although i will say i did i did a takeout a google takeout of my photos library that's a fun one it's a more than a terabyte of photos that google is holding on to for me so i ended up with 19 1950 gig file uh zip files well what i think is interesting is that is is that so i'm at 62.6 gig of my 100 gig use so i mean it's it's funny because i'm like i still got 40 gig but now i'm like sweating because i'm like 40 gig like 10 years ago 40 gig would have been like like it's like more storage than you'd ever need but now i'm like i think i'm going to fill it up quickly but also like if you if you're a google drive user have you noticed that annoying pop-up that they've been reminding everybody that the trash settings are changing so here's a larger question is the unlimited storage banks of google actually did they hit their limit yeah i mean that's a good question right like i mean google's been doing this this kind of free thing for five years i believe it's a good amount of time you know it just really what it does for me is it is it reinforces just the true the the fact that when we do what we've been doing which is keeping you know our data in somebody else's cloud at any point those rules can change and we just kind of have to i mean i hate to say it we kind of have to be okay with that because in the case of of this like google's been holding on to a terabyte of my data for free and so i'm not going to complain about that like that's crazy that i've that for five years well i don't know i mean i guess the flip the flip side of that is google you know monetizes on our data in other ways so is this double dipping i've seen people complain about that and i don't know i mean i guess i think it's frustrating like at first i was really rolling my eyes at the just the numerous memes that were coming out and just how far some people were taking this but then i realized you know it is sort of frustrating a couple years back i uploaded every photo that i have every digital photo that i have in my possession uh two google photos that i'd have it everywhere so that they could you know i could take advantage of that great search algorithm i can you know every picture from any year i could just like bring it up no problem it really is like having a it's like having the the memory files that are in my brain having them into a digital form however it's sort of frustrating now down the line to think well yeah the stuff that i uploaded with the pixel is not going to count against that ever theoretically for a lifetime what about all the other stuff i keep adding you know i just recently switched to oneplus and we're adding more people to the photo albums because there's like shared photo albums now that people are really investing in and it's become this like little social network gathering and i get the idea of google one and how that's supposed to all integrate but as a consumer i'm just sort of frustrated that i gave all of these photos to help build this wonderful machine algorithm to be able to identify anything at the drop of a search term but now years later i have to really think about adding on to i have to really think about what i'm paying for again and i have to keep going through this cycle and keep thinking like well where is my data going to be stored um it's like having a bunch of physical stuff and having to move storage sheds you know totally and and it's such a pain in the butt and i feel the same way about it digitally because it's something that i have to manage it it's time it's something that i have to devote time to that's my argument yeah i mean for too long and honestly for too long i mean i know personally i was lulled it's something i used to you used to worry about when managing a local hard drive and then the cloud has instilled this level of of confidence slash luxury slash relaxation where i literally haven't thought about this for years so yeah now i have something else about on top of everything else that i have to think about you know it's uh it's annoying and it's also just kind of now i'm understanding too why people are really complaining about google killing things because now that i'm giving more and more money to google i'm realizing that this could be the status quo for anything else that i sign up for in this ecosystem like i really have to start thinking about am i gonna have to like pay for this down the line like is this just a test bed that i'm a part of right now and it's setting a precedent that i don't like whereas i feel like a company like apple just to bring up an example it's just up front and says we need you to pay for this icloud storage here's the tears boom boom boom and just sort of expect that as a part of the experience yeah i mean comparing against icloud right like if you do a free icloud you know the free icloud storage from my understanding is five gigs google gives you 15 so already they're they're giving a whole lot more i when i think of this this service storage like kind of like what you were saying ron this is this is a problem that i never really spent a whole lot of time thinking very much about because it just was the way it was but when i really think about it now would i really expect like any company in the world to provide a service like this for free in perpetuity forever and like no i kind of don't and and maybe that's the pessimistic side of me as far as corporations and businesses are concerned but at the end of the day they are there to make money and like when i think of the exponential growth of my own photo and video library just from a storage perspective i'm one person in this world and i've got a terabyte of free storage on their servers and then you scale that across to everyone that's storing their stuff on google servers like that's insane how much and yes i totally get it google used that data to build the systems that we also benefited from because that was part of the free service that we were using right so it was uh as you said a couple of episodes flow it was collateral you know it was our collateral it's like here we go you could have this for free give me that for free and uh they did that and now they've now they've decided all right we've given you your value and now we want you to pay two dollars a month and you know what this makes me i just we've been talking about this a lot it started with the whole google play music turnover and i feel like this is another place where this really uh could work is just you got to have that home server you got to have your stuff locally stored there's got to be i really want to crack the nut of just how to get uh everybody into this idea because we've just been sold all this like cloud storage just pay for it just put it away you don't have to worry about it but i feel like it is time we hit the stop button just the way that life has sort of forced us to hit the stop button this year in 2020 and reclaim that data i i'm very serious about this because we kind of forgot that we have to take stock of it just like anything tangible so that's my campaign for 2021. that's your platform it's a good platform to be on i think for sure fair enoughthis is twit all right so this was big news i saw a lot of people uh getting in on this one google photos is gonna stop offering free unlimited storage to users photos uploads will begin charging for any storage space beyond the 15 gigs of free storage that's included with google accounts these changes actually take place on june 1st 2021 so anything uploaded before june 1st in high quality will still not count against the 15 gigs of default drive storage current pixel owners because pixel owners were you know have since i think since day one with google photos been the recipients of free storage be it original storage original quality but that free storage went away a couple of years ago but still maintain the high quality storage they're going to continue we are going to continue to get unlimited free uploads if using high quality however future pixel devices it's been confirmed i will not support uh any of those free uploads so kind of the gravy train ends with the pixel 5 i think as far as that's concerned um so what was what was funny was my my wife got the email from google about this and was like oh google's gonna start charging for google photos it's like not for me and i completely dismissed it and then like an hour later i got the email i was like oh wait a minute this is something this is something that's happening yep yep um but i am on google one my legacy gmail account uh that is not public um that i've been on since since back in the beta days ran out of space and so i was forced to go into google one so i'm already paying that so like and that's what my google photos account is associated with so like i'm good i think and i'm a pixel launcher yeah i mean you're you're good right you're good until you decide to i suppose upgrade to a newer pixel at which time all of your photos whether they're high quality or unlim or original quality will count against your storage space and even then you're still good until you run out of space in your google one account you have to upgrade to the next tier right which which yeah which i let me uh let me do a check to see where i'm at with that but uh i think i'm gonna be okay uh um burke just highlighted google one pricing is not changing that's true i mean and the pricing is pretty reasonable if you're well it's pretty pretty reasonable all around i'm on the 200 gig google one plan so that's 299 a month and yeah the way i figure like for 299 for backing up a bunch of my data to the cloud and not having to stress about it like i'm cool with that um although i will say i did i did a takeout a google takeout of my photos library that's a fun one it's a more than a terabyte of photos that google is holding on to for me so i ended up with 19 1950 gig file uh zip files well what i think is interesting is that is is that so i'm at 62.6 gig of my 100 gig use so i mean it's it's funny because i'm like i still got 40 gig but now i'm like sweating because i'm like 40 gig like 10 years ago 40 gig would have been like like it's like more storage than you'd ever need but now i'm like i think i'm going to fill it up quickly but also like if you if you're a google drive user have you noticed that annoying pop-up that they've been reminding everybody that the trash settings are changing so here's a larger question is the unlimited storage banks of google actually did they hit their limit yeah i mean that's a good question right like i mean google's been doing this this kind of free thing for five years i believe it's a good amount of time you know it just really what it does for me is it is it reinforces just the true the the fact that when we do what we've been doing which is keeping you know our data in somebody else's cloud at any point those rules can change and we just kind of have to i mean i hate to say it we kind of have to be okay with that because in the case of of this like google's been holding on to a terabyte of my data for free and so i'm not going to complain about that like that's crazy that i've that for five years well i don't know i mean i guess the flip the flip side of that is google you know monetizes on our data in other ways so is this double dipping i've seen people complain about that and i don't know i mean i guess i think it's frustrating like at first i was really rolling my eyes at the just the numerous memes that were coming out and just how far some people were taking this but then i realized you know it is sort of frustrating a couple years back i uploaded every photo that i have every digital photo that i have in my possession uh two google photos that i'd have it everywhere so that they could you know i could take advantage of that great search algorithm i can you know every picture from any year i could just like bring it up no problem it really is like having a it's like having the the memory files that are in my brain having them into a digital form however it's sort of frustrating now down the line to think well yeah the stuff that i uploaded with the pixel is not going to count against that ever theoretically for a lifetime what about all the other stuff i keep adding you know i just recently switched to oneplus and we're adding more people to the photo albums because there's like shared photo albums now that people are really investing in and it's become this like little social network gathering and i get the idea of google one and how that's supposed to all integrate but as a consumer i'm just sort of frustrated that i gave all of these photos to help build this wonderful machine algorithm to be able to identify anything at the drop of a search term but now years later i have to really think about adding on to i have to really think about what i'm paying for again and i have to keep going through this cycle and keep thinking like well where is my data going to be stored um it's like having a bunch of physical stuff and having to move storage sheds you know totally and and it's such a pain in the butt and i feel the same way about it digitally because it's something that i have to manage it it's time it's something that i have to devote time to that's my argument yeah i mean for too long and honestly for too long i mean i know personally i was lulled it's something i used to you used to worry about when managing a local hard drive and then the cloud has instilled this level of of confidence slash luxury slash relaxation where i literally haven't thought about this for years so yeah now i have something else about on top of everything else that i have to think about you know it's uh it's annoying and it's also just kind of now i'm understanding too why people are really complaining about google killing things because now that i'm giving more and more money to google i'm realizing that this could be the status quo for anything else that i sign up for in this ecosystem like i really have to start thinking about am i gonna have to like pay for this down the line like is this just a test bed that i'm a part of right now and it's setting a precedent that i don't like whereas i feel like a company like apple just to bring up an example it's just up front and says we need you to pay for this icloud storage here's the tears boom boom boom and just sort of expect that as a part of the experience yeah i mean comparing against icloud right like if you do a free icloud you know the free icloud storage from my understanding is five gigs google gives you 15 so already they're they're giving a whole lot more i when i think of this this service storage like kind of like what you were saying ron this is this is a problem that i never really spent a whole lot of time thinking very much about because it just was the way it was but when i really think about it now would i really expect like any company in the world to provide a service like this for free in perpetuity forever and like no i kind of don't and and maybe that's the pessimistic side of me as far as corporations and businesses are concerned but at the end of the day they are there to make money and like when i think of the exponential growth of my own photo and video library just from a storage perspective i'm one person in this world and i've got a terabyte of free storage on their servers and then you scale that across to everyone that's storing their stuff on google servers like that's insane how much and yes i totally get it google used that data to build the systems that we also benefited from because that was part of the free service that we were using right so it was uh as you said a couple of episodes flow it was collateral you know it was our collateral it's like here we go you could have this for free give me that for free and uh they did that and now they've now they've decided all right we've given you your value and now we want you to pay two dollars a month and you know what this makes me i just we've been talking about this a lot it started with the whole google play music turnover and i feel like this is another place where this really uh could work is just you got to have that home server you got to have your stuff locally stored there's got to be i really want to crack the nut of just how to get uh everybody into this idea because we've just been sold all this like cloud storage just pay for it just put it away you don't have to worry about it but i feel like it is time we hit the stop button just the way that life has sort of forced us to hit the stop button this year in 2020 and reclaim that data i i'm very serious about this because we kind of forgot that we have to take stock of it just like anything tangible so that's my campaign for 2021. that's your platform it's a good platform to be on i think for sure fair enough\n"