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Dropbox deletes Rick and Morty creators account for secret TOS violation
211–220 of 381 posts
Re: Dropbox deletes Rick and Morty creators account for secret TOS violation
#212Re: Dropbox deletes Rick and Morty creators account for secret TOS violation
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
bet you a dollar that they were taken down because they were sharing links to content they had created for Rick and Morty etc and Dropbox’s dumb algo just didn’t know that they were the creators of that content.
If that's the case surely they could have told him that was the reason. Otherwise we're talking about software engineers deliberately writing code to waste other people's time and make the Dropbox product look worse to their customers or prospective customers.
> Otherwise we're talking about software engineers deliberately writing code to waste other people's time and make the Dropbox product look worse to their customers or prospective customers.
Seems true-to-form. This has been Dropbox's product strategy for the last 5 years.
Re: Dropbox deletes Rick and Morty creators account for secret TOS violation
#214Reminds me of an incident we had with Dropbox a decade ago. They deleted some niche accounting software (custom developed by us) from our Dropbox account, plus their own log files covering those deletions. Then played ignorant. We learned the lesson, and never again trusted Dropbox, for anything. (Best guess - a would-be client got pissed when software which they'd never paid for lacked a feature, and told Dropbox a…
Sadly this story could have happened with any big cloud provider. Ideally there would be more regulation around the ability of big tech companies to shutdown your digital life through a mindless algorithm, with close to zero recourse. Unfortunately I don’t see anything happening unless someone really powerful (say a member of Congress) gets bitten by this.
The solution to this in my mind is self-hosting. Yes, right now that's the exclusive domain of tech nerds, but in theory there's no reason that an open source project can't come along and make this relatively easy for non-techies to set up for themselves (in a similar way to how, say, Squarespace made website creation easy).
I think the real hurdle in adoption would be that most non-techies don't even register their dependence on big cloud providers as a problem yet. But I expect the day is coming. Similar to how Mastodon saw an influx of Twitter users when Musk announced he was intending to buy Twitter.
Re: Dropbox deletes Rick and Morty creators account for secret TOS violation
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
Assuming this is copyright related... probably not. The only way this could be done in practice would be for Justin Roiland/Williams Street/Rick & Morty LLC/Cartoon Network/Warner Bros. to legally indemnify Dropbox - as in, agree to pay all of Dropbox's legal fees and damages if they get sued for copyright infringement outside of their DMCA 512 safe harbor. This is entirely impractical for an individual to pull off,…
bet you a dollar that they were taken down because they were sharing links to content they had created for Rick and Morty etc and Dropbox’s dumb algo just didn’t know that they were the creators of that content.
Dropbox only hashes files that they've gotten DMCA takedowns for. So WB told Dropbox "do not allow people to share Rick & Morty", and then got angry because they couldn't share Rick & Morty internally. This isn't a false positive, the algorithm is working exactly as intended.
Re: Dropbox deletes Rick and Morty creators account for secret TOS violation
#216Reminds me of an incident we had with Dropbox a decade ago. They deleted some niche accounting software (custom developed by us) from our Dropbox account, plus their own log files covering those deletions. Then played ignorant. We learned the lesson, and never again trusted Dropbox, for anything. (Best guess - a would-be client got pissed when software which they'd never paid for lacked a feature, and told Dropbox a…
Sadly this story could have happened with any big cloud provider. Ideally there would be more regulation around the ability of big tech companies to shutdown your digital life through a mindless algorithm, with close to zero recourse. Unfortunately I don’t see anything happening unless someone really powerful (say a member of Congress) gets bitten by this.
I don't think it is something that needs legislation.
But it definitely needs more publicity. And if there is something that will bring down "big tech", I think that's it.
"cloud providers" should be treated like something that can fail. We already don't trust hard drives, that's why we have RAID, we don't even trust RAID arrays, that's why we have backups, and we don't trust the place where backups are stored, that's why we have off-site backups. Dropbox (and Microsoft, Google, etc...) is also not to be trusted, just like your hard drive can crash or your servers can catch fire, Dropbox can delete your data. It is not the same mechanism (one is a chemical reaction, the other is a mindless algorithm), but the end result is the same: you lose your data.
But once you take that into account, the value proposition of big cloud providers takes a hit. Often, big companies justify the premium price they ask with reliability. I mean, no one expects companies like Microsoft to go bankrupt anytime soon, and they certainly know about backups and redundancy, but what's the point if all it takes for your data to disappear is an artificial brain fart. Suddenly, the server in your basement doesn't look so bad in comparison, and neither are the smaller companies that actually have people you can talk to.
Re: Dropbox deletes Rick and Morty creators account for secret TOS violation
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dropbox is afaik the only cross platform one with support for extended file attributes like tags, comments and custom icons in macOS, which I use extensively.
Google Drive is also cross platform, but in Linux it's not a one click solution.
You missed the qualifier though "with support for extended file attributes". Google Drive does not support extended file attributes.
Re: Dropbox deletes Rick and Morty creators account for secret TOS violation
#218localhost ftw !
Re: Dropbox deletes Rick and Morty creators account for secret TOS violation
#219Dropbox doesn't have any functioning contact points. I cancelled my yearly subscription a month ago the day after it renewed, they cancelled my premium benefits immediately but never send the $120 refund that the cancellation page said I'd get. Tried contacting them from their website contact page, nothing. Tried tweeting at their support account, nothing. I'm half tempted to try to get my bank to do a chargeback. It…
Do the charge-back! There is no other course if you want that money back.
Re: Dropbox deletes Rick and Morty creators account for secret TOS violation
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems like it does need to. Banning people for content they legally posses seems pretty questionable. Edit: You completely rewrote you comment after I responded, that is considered bad form on HN.
You responded less than 60 seconds after I wrote my comment, the substance of which is unchanged. Organizing thoughts into words is a process for me, it takes a moment.
There's a "delay" option in your settings, it's in minutes
I give myself 6 minutes to fluff around (or get bored of and delete) comments before they appear live for that same reason