Yes, it's similar to just encrypting yourself and then using AWS S3 or something. That's not a differentiator, but usually people object decentralized solutions

Yes, it's similar to just encrypting yourself and then using AWS S3 or something. That's not a differentiator, but usually people object decentralized solutions because they fear that anybody could access the data. So it's built into the protocol itself, and you can't accidentally send unencrypted data to the network. For most users, the real benefit is price. Also, there might be users who can't use AWS S3 for example, because it's not available in their country for some reason. There is liability, but it's handled through smart contracts. The hosts have to insert collateral to the system, which they lose if they can't hold their end of the data contract. The data is also replicated to multiple hosts, and encoded with erasure correcting code (with user selected redundancy) which protects against host failures.