@danarel if you find some good alternatives let me know, I haven't found *any* decent photo managers. Nextcloud seems like the best option out there but yeah, requires a server.

Personally I sync to my NAS and computers with Resilio Sync, and I have my family members do the same.

In general though, all I can really say is iCloud seems fine for most people. If you're on Android without a custom ROM (like the "masses" will be) tbh you've already made pretty poor privacy decisions.