Correct perhaps, it could be a scaling issue. Many of us will get to this scale. It was handled perfectly before September.
I don’t want to use cloud. I take screenshots of things like medicine bottle labels and maps that are private. They will end up public no matter how hard I protect.
iCloud is not public. The only things YOU elect to make public are made public and then only to people you select, from family, to friends, up to everyone. . . but is your choice. iCloud itself is encrypted and, contrary to popular misconception about the Celebrity Nude Photo Fappening, it has never been hacked.
Those Fappening photos did not come from a hacking of iCloud's security but rather by combination of a collection of already existing collected nude photos and social engineering email phishing to acquire the celebrity's AppleID's and passwords to get access to their individual iCloud accounts.