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Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos

#231

Post by barbazoo »

papito wrote: post #215
barbazoo wrote: post #139

Please please support custom storage back ends, I'd love to use my Dropbox or S3 or whatever to still fully own my pictures. And I'd love to pay extra to opt out of and analysis, tagging, etc of my photos. Basically I'd like the interface to be similar to Google Photos but with a privacy focused storage engine and clients.

Heh. Yeah. Been building something like this, where you can have your choice of metadata storage and file storage. Out of the box, it would be Sqlite and the local FS, and then you can become adventurous. Postgres and S3? Elastic and S3? Sure. Needless to say, years later, I am still building it. For one guy doing this on my own time, it's a lift. Maybe after I quit my job soon :)

Is there something to share and possibly collaborate with others? Just now on the drive home I contemplated doing a POC with S3 storage but I acknowledge hoe much work that probably would be.

Re: Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos

#232

Post by Z_I_F_F »

pkursawe wrote: post #212
Radim wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We realized soon that it's hard to monetize such [self-hosted product] Spot on. We iterated on a similar product in this space: "privacy preserving", "self-hosted", "open source" etc. But focused on local AI indexing & search of personal videos and photos [0], rather than backups. We ultimately shelved VideoNinja because we weren't able to find a sustainable business angle: * Non-technical people simply don't care…

Just put a price on it, ffs! Make it extensible with plugins. To gain 100% trust make it open source. I am happy to pay good money of a local, non-leaking AI based tagging software for video and photos.

Very surprised no one has mentioned Synology yet. This has been done. And it's awesome!

I currently have a self-hosted google photos clone and I only paid for the hardware. Highly recommend.

Re: Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos

#233

Post by nicoburns »

vishnumohandas wrote: post #89
imagine99 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully agree. It's a hard sell getting people to switch from an evil but known cloud provider to an unknown cloud provider that claims to not be evil. What we do not need is more cloud offerings that can change, vanish or lock us out at the blink of an algorithm's eye. What we need, rather, are reliable and easy-to-use solutions that allow us to retain full control of our data (i.e. self-hosted and offline) while ha…

Hey, so the project had initially started off as a self-hostable software (with an option to buy a pre-configured device). We realized soon that it's hard to monetize such a product in the consumer space to the point where it can become self-sustaining. We don't have a problem with offering a self-hosted variant. But given our limited engineering bandwidth we had to take a call on who our target market should be, and…

Can I suggest adding pricing tier(s) between 100GB and 1000GB? I have between 100gb and 200gb of photos, and £14.99/month seems like a lot considering I only pay £2.49/month for google storage. I'd definitely consider paying a premium for this service, but not 6x.

Re: Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos

#234

Post by Z_I_F_F »

vishnumohandas wrote: post #127
Youden wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the decision but I think it misses part of the problem: how do you convince people like your mum and dad to start paying for backups and how do you convince them to pay extra for privacy? I suspect the way it usually happens is that somebody your parents trust (like you) tells them to sign up for a privacy-preserving backup service. But who's going to tell them to do that? Do you have the money to pay for adver…

> how do you convince them to pay extra for privacy? We are hopeful that we will be able to reduce the pricing as we scale up and hit a critical mass. > who's going to tell them to do that? We plan to implement a referral program, similar to what Dropbox did, to incentivize existing customers to spread the word. That said, you do bring up interesting points. To repeat, we aren't averse to the idea of maintaining a se…

I really hope the self-hosted option becomes a thing, but unfortunately "we are not averse to the idea" means especially little in the tech world these days.

That being said, really really hoping for your success! It finally fills a MUCH needed gap in 2021 consumer image viewing software.

There are many many gaps in it right now. Synology is basically the only self-hosted photo solution that grandma could use. Honestly surprised that more people aren't taking advantage of the opportunity.

Re: Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos

#236

Post by Chilko »

Roritharr wrote: post #229
mrobins wrote: post #123

I’ve been watching this project for a long time and personally am very excited. The fact that it’s #1 on HN today (congrats!) makes me think I’m not the only one. There are also a lot of valid concerns in these comments about privacy and use of algorithms. A lot of it depends on what you’re looking to gain by adopting a new service/switching away from something else and individual concern. Personally, I’m looking for…

I'm in the same boat, have been watching, love that they have a businessmodel and am waiting for the time when they are covering my needs (face recognition, object / scene detection...). I'd even pay a 2$/month "lurker" subscription which has like 100mb of storage so I can check the features from time to time and support the team.

Looking at their pricing for €0.99 / month you can get 10gb storage, so go at it!

Re: Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos

#239

Post by detaro »

judge2020 wrote: post #237

Off-topic, but why is the color for regular text on HN text posts so light? For comments, it indicates a downvoted comment, but seemingly all text posts are this grey color.

AFAIK to discourage people from using them, it's preferred that you submit links. (I think they also get ranked worse)

Re: Show HN: We built an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos

#240

Post by fy20 »

DenisM wrote: post #145
barbazoo wrote: post #139

Please please support custom storage back ends, I'd love to use my Dropbox or S3 or whatever to still fully own my pictures. And I'd love to pay extra to opt out of and analysis, tagging, etc of my photos. Basically I'd like the interface to be similar to Google Photos but with a privacy focused storage engine and clients.

I concur. However storage is how they plan to make money, so there will need to be a different monetization strategy for BYO storage. As yet I can't imagine any. EDIT: I think have an idea! Add the S3/OneDrive/Etc support but comment it out. To make use of it one would have to download the source, XCode, compile it, and deploy it. This puts a cap on the number of people who can do that, so you won't end up with every…

The problem with that is that some kind fellow on GitHub will clone the project, uncomment the code to enable the premium features for free, and change its name. If it's released under a FOSS license, the original authors have little recourse.

This is what happened with Emby (a media server like Plex). The backend was open source and there was a license to activate premium features. Somebody cloned it, and then released the premium features to everyone for free.

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