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Ask HN: Notion is withholding my company data, what can I do?

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Re: Ask HN: Notion is withholding my company data, what can I do?

#191

Post by louisvgchi »

ryan-duve wrote: post #177
ceocoder wrote: post #77

T-10 before founder shows up here and says something like, “I’m sorry that you feel this way, I’m going to personally fix this”. That will not go well. After about, say 5/6 hours of “reflection”, “soul searching”, “meditation” - they’ll offer a better non apology. Finally a day later, “we screwed up, we broke your trust and we own it”.

I got the impression from your comment that you disapprove of the above scenario, when to me it seems ideal. If I interpreted that right, could you help me understand why the above is bad?

You shouldn’t have to publicly shame a company on hacker news to make them be baseline level good to their customers.

But many tech companies are like that once they scale up.

Re: Ask HN: Notion is withholding my company data, what can I do?

#193

Post by MrWiffles »

hodgesrm wrote: post #189
MrWiffles wrote: post #81

A few things come to mind, all under the theme of "lighting a fire under their ass". First, I'd contact your state attorney general's office. See this link to usa.gov for a contact database: https://www.usa.gov/state-attorney-general || https://www.naag.org/find-my-ag/ Next, contact your representative in the House and both your Senators: https://www.house.gov/representatives && https://www.senate.gov/states/statesma…

Wouldn't it be less effort to figure out how to migrate off? Not every product works for everyone. It sounds as if you want to unleash the Spanish Inquisition.

> Wouldn't it be less effort to figure out how to migrate off?

You can't migrate data you don't have and can't get.

> It sounds as if you want to unleash the Spanish Inquisition.

Forcing a company to face civil consequences and bad PR hardly compares with an institutionalized, brutal assault on human rights that tortured and murdered ~3000 people over three centuries, some by being burned alive.

It DOES, however, bear at least a chance of the OP getting their own property (data) back from the hostage taker.

Most importantly, by creating consequences for malicious action, the OP has a good chance (if successful) of PROTECTING FUTURE VICTIMS.

When you're being attacked, you don't just lay back and take it because it's easier. You hit back, because otherwise the bad guy is going to do the same - or worse - to somebody else, next.

“Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.” - John Stuart Mill, 1867

Re: Ask HN: Notion is withholding my company data, what can I do?

#194

Post by bostonsre »

freedomben wrote: post #184
prower wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've learned that good intentions are filtered differently when the other party is already angry. If my customer is having a problem, I can try being friendly after the communication is already ongoing, problem has been aknowledged, and it is on his way to be fixed. Ending in a friendly tone is a big plus. Starting with it, not at all. On the other hand, as a customer, having to deal with you at all is already stress…

It seems like the disconnect here is that the angry people are viewing this one person's response as representative of the entire company and as though it was filtered through a PR rep, while the more understanding people are viewing this person a person speaking for themselves, not necessarily the whole company. The person could have just copy pasted the canned response with no help and it sounds like a lot of peopl…

Yea, that sounds about right. I think I recall being a support rep for trading software in college and I've interacted with those front line workers for a long time now so I have a lot of empathy for them.

They are just people trying to do their job and I don't recall a single support rep that wasn't just trying to do their job well. People are complicated and socializing is hard, especially when it's not in person. What we do is almost always not life and death. We shuffle bits around between computers, we shouldn't take ourselves so seriously. There is no reason people can't be nice to each other in these interactions.

Re: Ask HN: Notion is withholding my company data, what can I do?

#195

Post by nelsonlok »

josephg wrote: post #23

This is truly awful, and honestly shouldn't surprise anyone given the modern cloud approach to software. I've been thinking a lot lately about ownership. If I have a book, I can interact with it the way the publisher expects (I can read it). But being a physical object, I can also do lots of other things with my book. I can burn it. I can give it to a friend. I can sell it. I can draw in it. I can rip it up and use i…

We can't even export Google Docs in its native format. If one day Google shutdown Google Docs, you probably loses your documents forever.

Re: Ask HN: Notion is withholding my company data, what can I do?

#196

Post by LdSGSgvupDV »

josephg wrote: post #23

This is truly awful, and honestly shouldn't surprise anyone given the modern cloud approach to software. I've been thinking a lot lately about ownership. If I have a book, I can interact with it the way the publisher expects (I can read it). But being a physical object, I can also do lots of other things with my book. I can burn it. I can give it to a friend. I can sell it. I can draw in it. I can rip it up and use i…

That's why I become a software engineer. I would like to host the services and use cloud as backup.

Right now, the only thing bothers me is the email service. For a selfhosted email service, there might be some problems.

For example, I would like to sign up FB by my custom domain email address, but after roughly two days they treat me as bot and ask for cellphone which I don't want to give them. Because there is no way to delete the cellphone later. The function on their setting is not working. Even if you deleted the cellphone on setting page, you could still get targeted AD by hashed cellphone information. It seems like they use hashed information as the way to against user deleting.

Re: Ask HN: Notion is withholding my company data, what can I do?

#197

Post by LdSGSgvupDV »

Xunjin wrote: post #60
josephg wrote: post #23

This is truly awful, and honestly shouldn't surprise anyone given the modern cloud approach to software. I've been thinking a lot lately about ownership. If I have a book, I can interact with it the way the publisher expects (I can read it). But being a physical object, I can also do lots of other things with my book. I can burn it. I can give it to a friend. I can sell it. I can draw in it. I can rip it up and use i…

Indeed you have a great point here, as I can simplify, you do not own your data, you buy allocation of certain service, like you said about Amazon ebooks. Indeed I'm a guy who balances more between freedom instead of making it rigidly by laws, however the "Tech World" really needs "foundational directives" where all companies should abide. Like John Locke defines, as I remember, that you have a "natural right" to Lif…

And, right to cancel AUTO-UPDATING!!!

Re: Ask HN: Notion is withholding my company data, what can I do?

#198

Post by nelsonlok »

nojvek wrote: post #178

I've had this idea in my head to make a notion-like editor which uses Git/GH as it's store of data. When you save, it makes a commit. Everything is saved as flat json files and image/data blobs. Seeing this comment, is further solidifying the idea. Notion is a great editor, but having little control over data isn't great. User should be able to control where the data lives. And when they want it gone, it should be go…

Ghost's source code might be a good start.

They already have most things you need but the Git integration.

Re: Ask HN: Notion is withholding my company data, what can I do?

#199

Post by naikrovek »

hluska wrote: post #162
naikrovek wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's insulting because it is attempting to minimize the customer's stake in the problem by appearing to be concerned and empathetic. if they were concerned or empathetic, the issue would not have lasted as long as it has. in short, it's disingenuous and it's an attempt to minimize the customer's concerns.

Do you have special crystal ball that lets you peer into another company’s dev processes? If not, who are you to claim people have no empathy? That’s not only a really dark view of humans but it ignores the possibility that they cannot fix it right now. God people, have a touch of respect for our colleagues.

I have respect for my colleagues at other companies.

They lose it when they talk down to me. "oof, sorry about that, but this is not important enough for us to fix right now" is not how you keep my respect, when the functionality has been broken for months.

Re: Ask HN: Notion is withholding my company data, what can I do?

#200

Post by prower »

freedomben wrote: post #184
prower wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've learned that good intentions are filtered differently when the other party is already angry. If my customer is having a problem, I can try being friendly after the communication is already ongoing, problem has been aknowledged, and it is on his way to be fixed. Ending in a friendly tone is a big plus. Starting with it, not at all. On the other hand, as a customer, having to deal with you at all is already stress…

It seems like the disconnect here is that the angry people are viewing this one person's response as representative of the entire company and as though it was filtered through a PR rep, while the more understanding people are viewing this person a person speaking for themselves, not necessarily the whole company. The person could have just copy pasted the canned response with no help and it sounds like a lot of peopl…

Yes and no.

People realize the guy there is not the whole company, but they also realize they are the only way to get communication going, and losing time only to be greeted with an "ooof" can be annoying.

Of course it also depends on the specific case (how big the problem, how angry the customer, how long the "ooof"), but I've been on both sides for a couple of years now and starting in an over-frienly manner sets the mood for an "un-important" context.

And, in particularly bad cases, that could sour the entire conversation.

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