Forced cloud

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Forced cloud, forced internet, forced remote connection, etc... is a practice in which software or hardware requires a continuous/constant (or, at least, regular) device connection to remote servers owned by the company who made said software/hardware, even when the features technically don't require network connections.

Because forced cloud generally means locality is technically possible, entities that engage in this practice have little reason to do so outside of personal gain. They may find it favorable for several reasons, including:

• Tracking
• Remote disabling
• Centralization

Forced-cloud is an extreme case of cloud-first architecture, the antithesis of local-first.

Why it is a problem

Minimal ownership

Forcing cloud connections implies that the cloud can revoke the user access to their data at any time.

Vendor lock-in

See also: Data lock-in

The user is "chained" to the cloud provider. The provider typically has no incentives to support interoperability, making it harder for the user to migrate.

Limited or non-existent offline functionality

Products or services that depend of cloud services might work partially or might not work at all, making the product or service very limited or unusable if there's not any network connection.

Examples

• Microsoft (MS) Windows 11 requires internet connection during setup, to force the user to login with a MS account
• YouTube (YT) Premium "offline" videos are deleted from the user's local storage, unless there's a regular connection to YT servers
• Amazon FireTV refuses to show any apps in the "launcher" (home-screen) unless the user is connected to the internet, preventing the user from accessing their local apps^{[citation needed]}