99% of users either don't have backups of their precious photos, or only do because they blindly clicked through "set up iCloud" or their Google/Android or Windows equivalents.

It's different precisely because most social/cloud networks abstract away backups.

Very few people have considered whether or not they should attempt to back up their Facebook account. Same's true for Flickr, Twitter, and Gmail.

Frankly I trust Google and Facebook more than I do myself with regard to backups. I know it will eventually burn me, but I've lost, misplaced or misplaced the key to my backups more than once.

I'm probably in the minority being so irresponsible with my own backups, but I'm not alone.

Google and Facebook have a lot on the line with regard to user trust of their reliability. Also, they can't monetize data that they've lost.

But goosebook and facegle make backups for their own sake. You're still tied by vendor lock-in and can be locked out of your own data on a whim and prevented from switching to another service provider. They can and do monetize data that users have been locked out of.

I'd rather have my own backup copieS and take my own responsibilities. The scenario you evoke here would not happen if you had proper backup strategy, two is one and one is none.

The 'cloud backup' part could still be extracted away, using integrations with common providers (dropbox, onedrive, gdrive, etc). It would be a configuration step, but one that has pretty obvious benefits to the user so maybe they'd be likely to supply their credentials for that.

Maybe they should?

Maybe but the person's point stands. Facebook has multiple datacenters with probably some kind of backups. It keeps things for years at a time even when it doesn't need to. It likes to because it helps the business model. Hardly anyone's pics and stuff will disappear.

Compare that to their experience at home with personal gear. Many like the convenience and reliability of Facebook over their own technical skills or efforts. You'd have to convince those people... a shitload of people... that they should start handling IT on their own. Also note that there's many good, smart, interesting, and so on people that simply don't do tech. Anyone filtering non-technical or procrastinating people in a service will be throwing out lots of folks whose company they might otherwise enjoy.

So, these kinds of issues are worth exploring when trying to build a better social network.

It only takes one time of having your account locked by facebook or google and said people are automatically convinced of the obvious advantage of being in control of your own data.

Same with backups, lose your data to drive failure or theft once and suddenly having a backup strategy becomes a priority.

But as long as they have not been bitten once they don't care enough to actually do something proactive.

They usually resolve those with access to their data. Their computers getting trashed by malware or breaking is different. It can cost money to do recovery that might give them nothing. That concern is the more common case.

My laptop keyboard has drain holes directing the liquid to the bottom without ever getting inside, so that's one way it is different.