Stop Believing the Fairy Tale
Every year the same script plays out at keynotes:
“Privacy is a human right."
"We believe encryption should be the default."
"Your data belongs to you.”
Then they ship iCloud with escrow keys, Google Drive with server-side encryption, OneDrive with “confidential” folders nobody uses, and Meta proudly announces E2EE for Messenger while WhatsApp backups stay wide open by default.
If zero-knowledge encryption is so obvious and so loved by users, why has exactly zero Big Tech company shipped a real ZK cloud drive in 2025?
The answer is simple: true zero-knowledge is the one feature that directly threatens every pillar their trillion-dollar empires are built on.
This is not about technical difficulty. It is about incentives.
ZK Encryption Is a Revenue Killer
Big Tech does not make money by selling you storage subscriptions. They make money by selling you.
Every megabyte you upload is another training example, another targeting signal, another behavioral profile to auction off.
Zero-knowledge encryption cuts that pipeline at the root. The moment your files become unreadable ciphertext on their servers, the surveillance business model collapses.
- No more scanning your documents for ad keywords
- No more training Gmail or Photos models on your private data
- No more “we accidentally leaked your nudes while improving AI”
Google once scanned every single uploaded file in Drive for CSAM using client-side hashing that still leaked perceptual hashes to them. Real ZK makes even that impossible without your keys.
When your core product is attention and your raw material is personal data, giving users mathematical control over that data is corporate suicide.
Important
The Data Hoarding Addiction
Companies are psychologically addicted to hoarding data the same way dragons hoard gold.
They keep decades-old backups “just in case”, run A/B tests on deleted accounts, and archive every click because storage is cheap and future products might need it.
Zero-knowledge forces a brutal choice: delete or stay blind.
You cannot run usage analytics, cannot generate Smart Pickups in Photos, cannot train the next Gemini on your tax returns if you literally cannot decrypt them.
Apple learned this the hard way with Advanced Data Protection. When they finally shipped optional ZK iCloud in 2023, adoption stayed tiny because most features (Photos memories, journal suggestions, collaborative playlists) silently stop working. Users voted with their feet and kept the convenient non-ZK default.
Data is the new oil, and ZK is the refinery that burns down.
UX Is Not the Problem. Incentives Are
You will hear this excuse forever:
“Normal people don’t want zero-knowledge because password loss equals data loss.”
Wrong.
Proton Drive, Skiff (RIP), Filen, and Internxt all ship real ZK today with growing user bases. Tuta offers ZK mail with millions of accounts. Signal has 700 million monthly users with zero-knowledge everything.
People happily accept “no password reset” when the stakes are high enough (Bitcoin wallets, anyone?).
The UX argument is pure copium. The real issue is that ZK removes the safety valves Big Tech uses to keep you trapped:
- No password reset means fewer support tickets but also no forced account recovery when the government shows up
- No server-side search means worse product but also no scanning for regulators
- No metadata means no recommendation engine but also no profiling
Convenience is just the public excuse. The private reason is control.
Governments Would Burn Them Alive
Every major economy runs bulk surveillance programs that depend on Big Tech cooperation.
The moment a company ships real ZK storage used by hundreds of millions, it becomes a jurisdictional black hole.
- US CLOUD Act demands cannot be satisfied
- EU eEvidence orders become unenforceable
- Five Eyes sharing agreements break
Apple already caves on iCloud backups in China by handing keys to state-owned GCBD. Imagine them telling the NSA “sorry, we literally cannot comply” for US users.
Politicians do not write polite letters in that scenario. They write laws, launch investigations, and threaten to break up companies.
Big Tech chooses quiet cooperation over public martyrdom every single time.
Machine Learning Needs Your Skeletons
The AI gold rush made everything worse.
Modern foundation models are starved for high-quality, personal data. The best training sets are no longer scraped Reddit posts. They are your private documents, photos, and messages.
Zero-knowledge starves the models.
OpenAI paid contractors to transcribe private WhatsApp voice messages (before E2EE). Google trains Gemini on everything it can touch. Apple wants on-device LLMs but still refuses to make iCloud Drive ZK by default.
When your competitive moat is data scale, giving users the ability to withhold that data is existential threat number one.
The Real Threat: Losing Monopoly Power
Here is the deepest fear nobody says out loud:
If users truly control their encryption keys and can export encrypted blobs to any compatible service, platform lock-in dies.
Today you stay in Google ecosystem because migrating 3 TB of raw files is hell. With real ZK, migration becomes “copy ciphertext, import keys”. Overnight every provider becomes interoperable.
That terrifies incumbents more than regulation.
Monopolies hate open standards. ZK plus open formats equals commodity storage. Margins collapse from 80% to single digits.
Why Startups Can Ship What Big Tech Can’t
Startups have three superpowers Big Tech lost decades ago:
- They are too small to be worth strong-arming by governments
- They are too broke to say no to privacy (differentiation is the only moat they have)
- They still ship products built by engineers, not MBAs
Proton was founded by CERN scientists who actually believe privacy matters. Standard Notes, Filen, and Peergos are built by paranoid cryptographers who would rather die than add a backdoor.
When your valuation is not tied to surveillance margins, building the right thing becomes possible.
Axiom
Big Tech executives use Signal and 1Password Vault with ZK. They just won’t let you have the same.
Privacy Will Never Come From Giants
History proves it:
- Apple fought the FBI once for marketing points, then quietly added CSAM scanning
- Google killed “Don’t be evil” the moment ads paid better
- Meta promises E2EE every year and still defaults backups off
The pattern is unbreakable: as companies scale, incentives corrupt absolutely.
The next mainstream zero-knowledge drive will not come from a campus with free sushi and massage rooms.
It will come from a couple of sleep-deprived weirdos who are angry enough about surveillance to suffer two years of cryptographic pain so you don’t have to.
That is the only force that has ever moved privacy forward.
Choose your tools accordingly.
The Proof: Startups Already Won
The market is voting. Proton Mail hit 100 million users. Signal is used by journalists, whistleblowers, and activists worldwide. Ellipticc Drive launched with quantum-resistant ZK from day one because we refused to wait for Big Tech to make the right choice.
The infrastructure exists. The code is open. The math is proven. The only missing piece is your decision to actually use it.
Big Tech will never give you privacy as a feature.
They will only give it to you when you stop asking and start leaving.
Note
Stop waiting for Big Tech to fix itself. Secure your files with true zero-knowledge encryption today. Your privacy shouldn’t depend on a corporation’s quarterly earnings.