> websites would treat your uploaded data with respect

Are you saying that the free websites in question owed their users completely free storage of that data, in perpetuity?

How is that a reasonable expectation, regardless of how one viewed "Chad"?

I can agree that that would certainly be nice. But like, with the exception of those who remained in continuous profitable operation, most free sites will end up shut down or sold, so either the data will be deleted, or someone is going to be paying for servers continuously to preserve that data forever. No one will do that and expect $0.

I'd also add that I am pretty sure of all random things uploaded to random sites 20 years ago, 99% of it is either content no one cares about today, or content that the uploader kept on their own disk or their paid cloud storage.