Updated to Sequioa 15.3 overnight, now my desktop is on iCloud where I don't want it.

ibookproblems wrote:

Why is my entire life now on icloud drive. This is a violation of my privacy and an irritant besides.

It isn't.

I have attempted to save a document to my real (not iCloud desktop) and now the doc has vanished.

If you enabled iCloud desktop and documents, your "real" desktop is the iCloud desktop.

And I don't want to pay you for storage so that you can troll through my entire life for Apple Intelligence.

You need not use iCloud. Apple does not troll through your data.

You can turn off desktop and documents if you so choose. Settings > Apple Account > iCloud. You'll get a new desktop and new documents folders. Your old data remains in iCloud Drive but you can simply drag/drop to your preferred location.

iCloud.com has several parts.

• iCloud Drive is a folder on your Mac, just like any other folder. Its contents are copied to a similar iCloud Drive folder at iCloud.com. So, there's a Mac iCloud Drive that has the same stuff as the iCloud iCloud Drive.
• iCloud Photos is a Photos Library at iCloud.com that is a copy of the Photos Library on the Mac
• iCloud Notes is a copy of your Notes that's on your Mac.
• and so on with messages, etc.

Turning on "Optimize Storage" confuses all this a bit. I don't do that on my Mac.

As muguy said, you can turn this stuff off at System Settings>Apple ID>iCloud. You can turn on or off each section.

While looking at the iCloud Drive in Finder, you should turn on "View>Show View Options>iCloud Status."

The status can be changed with the right click menu

• Downloaded means the file is at iCloud Drive and local, but that may change if you have Optimize on
• Kept Downloaded means the file is at iCloud Drive and local independent of Optimize
• In iCloud means the file is in iCloud drive only and is not on the local drive.
• Ignored means you shouldn't have put that there.