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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?

#41

Post by phuff »

Empathy. A lot of these suggestions here don't show it. Sure, Notion should fix this feature. If your backlog is completely free of features that are no brainers, raise your hand.

Anybody with your hand raised should be ashamed of yourself because I bet it's not true :)

Sure they should fix this -- but is this something they should be fined for? Or be DDOS-ed by Hacker News readers? Or GDPR reported for?

It's just not a great way to get help from up and coming businesses to force major financial pain on them and it's certainly not empathetic to what's likely a hard working, reasonable set of people on the other end of this service.

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

#42

Post by shados »

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…

One of the big problems is that software doesn't sell (or at least is really hard to sell). Piracy and that pesky "pay once unless you want to upgrade" problem companies aren't fond of. Services are easy to sell and code on your server is hard to pirate.

Still, there are gems out there, like Obsidian. Your files, put them where you want, how you want. Use the tool however you want, extend it if you want. Every other day someone comes up with some crazy plugin idea I didn't think I needed but now I do. If the company behind it goes poof, it will keep working.

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

#43

Post by shados »

rglover wrote: post #7

Depending on what you need, they have an API and a pseudo exporter could likely be built: https://developers.notion.com/reference/intro . Not great, but better than being stuck.

How much will you be able to export before getting rate limited to death though?

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

#45

Post by toomuchtodo »

ghayes wrote: post #33
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #6

I'm not a Notion customer, but frankly with a response like this I would never, ever be one. It's one thing to make a new feature request and have the response be "sorry, we'll get to it when we get to it." It's quite another to have a bug in an advertised, previously working feature, with no workaround, and say "sorry, our engineers have a big backlog." Imagine if a bank said "sorry, we know the withdrawal feature t…

I recently closed a bank account (due to Simple being acquired and the debacle of BBVA and now PNC) and it was quite difficult. I just wanted a "you send me a check with my remaining balance and we're done," and instead they told me I needed to withdraw my cash to zero (with limits that would have taken months), and only then could I close my account. Eventually, I was told a workaround where I could "Bill Pay" my ow…

Which is incredibly sad because PNC is really a great bank compared to the usual suspects (BoA, JPMC, Wells, etc).

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

#46

Post by mtlynch »

I was recently looking at self-hostable Notion alternatives for my team, and I was impressed with Outline. [0]

I ended up going with Notion because it was overall more user-friendly and handled image embeds easier, but Outline would be a nice option if you want to control your own data.

https://www.getoutline.com/

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

#48

Post by kortilla »

holistio wrote: post #12

You should not only point out that withholding your data is not a nice to have feature, but also that it is illegal. A lot of gates open up once companies smell the power of the law, and anyone from their support likely _has to_ escalate any issue where a lawyer is plausibly mentioned.

This can backfire. Support is trained to refer to legal anytime a legal threat is made. This results in amicable support ceasing and all communication going forward being done through lawyers. You have to be prepared to actually go after them using the legal system when you do this.

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

#50

Post by sylens »

I started using Notion last year and became increasingly uneasy about how little control I had over the notes and data I was entering into it. I switched over to Obsidian since then, which keeps my markdown files in folders on my local machine which I can then sync myself using OneDrive or something similar. You can also pay like $4/month for Obsidian to sync it for you, but you still retain copies locally.
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