For now, at least, it's easy enough not to live that way. You just: refuse to. Like, don't put your pictures on the cloud. Just be like: no, those go on my hard drive. Problem solved.
There's a big problem where the default photo apps on your phone push cloud storage with dark patterns that defeat most people. Then third party apps that don't do that will eventually rug pull you with ads or paywalls - probably just greed but my tinfoil hat tells me a non-zero number of these are done to undermine the concept of third party apps in general. At the very least the "automatic updates are always on" system is designed to aid these kinds of scams.
Photo storage of a problem because we take way more pictures than we used to and are too lazy to make physical albums anymore.
So then you need your own physical storage (which is incredibly expensive in 2026) plus some sort of software that makes it decently easy to find stuff. Most stuff that tries to compete with a Google Photos doesn't come close.
I don't know, man, maybe stop taking a photo every time someone sneezes. If you have a million photos, you kind of don't have any photos; it's just a mess of data sitting in a digital garbage can.
They add up over the course of 20+ years. Plus, when you have kids it's easier to take 20 pictures at a time since it's a pain to get them to smile nice, etc. So you end up with huge amounts of pictures sitting around of the same thing unless you go back and delete all but the best.
Every time I take eight pictures of my kid trying to get him to smile, I immediately delete the seven worst ones. I mean, that's just basic hygiene. That's like brushing your teeth.
For now, at least, it's easy enough not to live that way. You just: refuse to. Like, don't put your pictures on the cloud. Just be like: no, those go on my hard drive. Problem solved.
There's a big problem where the default photo apps on your phone push cloud storage with dark patterns that defeat most people. Then third party apps that don't do that will eventually rug pull you with ads or paywalls - probably just greed but my tinfoil hat tells me a non-zero number of these are done to undermine the concept of third party apps in general. At the very least the "automatic updates are always on" system is designed to aid these kinds of scams.
All of that pales in comparison to the lack of SD cards on flagship phones. That was done singularly to force people to rely on cloud storage.
Photo storage of a problem because we take way more pictures than we used to and are too lazy to make physical albums anymore.
So then you need your own physical storage (which is incredibly expensive in 2026) plus some sort of software that makes it decently easy to find stuff. Most stuff that tries to compete with a Google Photos doesn't come close.
I don't know, man, maybe stop taking a photo every time someone sneezes. If you have a million photos, you kind of don't have any photos; it's just a mess of data sitting in a digital garbage can.
They add up over the course of 20+ years. Plus, when you have kids it's easier to take 20 pictures at a time since it's a pain to get them to smile nice, etc. So you end up with huge amounts of pictures sitting around of the same thing unless you go back and delete all but the best.
Every time I take eight pictures of my kid trying to get him to smile, I immediately delete the seven worst ones. I mean, that's just basic hygiene. That's like brushing your teeth.