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

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 it as wallpaper. I can get the author to sign the front cover and donate it.

Software used to work this way too. If I have a Word document, I can interact with it the way Word expects - open it, edit it, save it and so on. And I can also do things microsoft doesn't expect. I can put it on my website. I can email it. I can back it up. I can delete it. I can reverse engineer the file format and edit it using other programs. I can archive it for 30 years, and know it will still work when I open it using the version of microsoft Word which created it. And so on.

But the new software model with smartphone apps and data in the cloud takes all this away. You can only do with your data what the publisher expects. If Notion doesn't have a working export API, tough luck. If GMail is missing an API for searching by regular expression, tough luck. If Adobe shuts down their activation servers, or a startup fails, or Google kills a product, tough luck. You've lost all your data. There is no backdoor. There are no other ways, by default, for you to have any agency over your own data that a product manager hasn't approved of. Amazon can delete books that they've already sold you. And they have. You can't sell a game you bought on steam. Or get it signed by the author. Or reverse engineer the raw database entries which store a google doc.

And this sucks. Its disempowering. I love the security on my phone, and the operational simplicity of not needing to manage my own backups. But this? I hate this. I hate that there's a good chance Notion will aquihired by a big tech company and shut down. I'm not ok with my own creations being at the whim of market forces like this.

I reject the idea that word and google docs are the only options. Git + Github is the model I want, where the cloud is a convenience but everything is stored locally as well. We need to start fighting for that.

Exactly, I tried that over and over and was ignored.

> I'm again explaining the same thing - If the feature isn't working, this is a critical function that they should at least try to generate manually as per my request.

Well this makes the "should I start using Notion" question easy. 3 months of captive data and stonewalling from support -- wouldn't touch it with ___ foot pole.

A threat of legal action will probably go a long way. I might be wrong, but I think it is actually illegal to withhold people's data upon request, especially if you claim to offer the feature. Also false advertising.

I can see how they would try to skirt around it though, they'd probably say that it is a temporary glitch but the functionality is available. That way it wouldn't be them withholding your data or false advertising per se, but rather a temporary incapacitation.

Another option would be to find other Notion customers who have the same issue or who can reproduce the same issue. That is, find other customers who you can ask to try to download their own data as well. If the issue is not isolated to you, then you can take class action against them and they would either have to take the feature down or issue a customer wide notice of of service/feature downtime. Either of these can be deemed a violation of the SLA on their part and give you a legal path for recourse.

In the mean time, you should probably reply to that email telling them to do it manually. Tell them that it is the feature you even got the subscription for. So if they said at the time of contract it is doable, then they ought to be able to do it manually if not via the feature.

Their backlog is none of your concern, they took your money and should deliver otherwise refund you.

Hope that helps.