The idea of “cloud” never crossed my mind until reading this article, as it was something so natural that the detailed structures of data base, information, political space, etc. seemed to just blindly exist in our lives. It is actually quite concerning to think that most the internet users are obliviously, and easily trusting of cloud-based internet services; our personal information, usage, records—where do they go?
Perhaps, our responsibilities are based on solely our decision to use the internet. Theoretically speaking, I still think we do have freedom as users of the net—but that depends on how you define “freedom.” If you were to base the idea of freedom on the Metahaven’s article, then it is surely limited. The story of Megaupload and its users that had no idea of them being “members of a conspiracy to conduct a crime in the US” just by agreeing to the site’s policies and downloading the contents, really hits you hard to know how easy it is to get yourself into depths of services with intentions unknown.
Everyone is subjected to this large boundary of “limited freedom,” or how else people would like to interpret it; once they make the decision to use the internet. It is not realistic as to say, “if you don’t like it, then don’t use the internet.” Since, really, do we have a choice? Even just to text your friends, send email to your professor, share documents on google drive, or to complete any mandatory tasks in your lives at all—internet is necessary. We just need to know what is behind the bright screens and unknown usage of what we provide to the servers in order to properly initiate our freedom.