Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dropbox deletes Rick and Morty creators account for secret TOS violation

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 381 posts

Re: Dropbox deletes Rick and Morty creators account for secret TOS violation

#241

Post by protomyth »

mdavidn wrote: post #221
mavhc wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't the files still on the computers that Dropbox synced to? Deleting files from Dropbox's servers, that's fine, deleting files from my computer that I uploaded to Dropbox, that's bad.

> Aren't the files still on the computers that Dropbox synced to? Not if “smart sync” is enabled on the folder. https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/sync-uploads/...

OneDrive recently switched to cloud stored and you have to jump through hoops to make it so you have a local copy of everything.

Re: Dropbox deletes Rick and Morty creators account for secret TOS violation

#242

Post by sleepybrett »

kmeisthax wrote: post #215
towaway15463 wrote: post #170

Earlier 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.

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.

except they should have notified their customer of the dmca violations on their account, if they did not .. that would run afoul of the dmca, right?

Re: Dropbox deletes Rick and Morty creators account for secret TOS violation

#243

Post by sleepybrett »

smaryjerry wrote: post #227
barnabee wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. It’s unacceptable for Dropbox to know/inspect what content you’re storing, scan it for anything without you actively requesting they do so, and certainly to delete it. This behaviour and any terms of service that allow it should be illegal. The fact that it goes on constantly is a scandal.

I kind of get both sides. They shouldn’t scan personal files at all but then again Dropbox files are also shareable and is kind of like YouTube in that way. So if in this case a guy has copyrighted content, which they own the copyright for, and are sharing copies of copyrighted content, how can an algorithm know it’s not some random person. It’s much more likely not to be the copyright owner than to be it. What’s the…

at worst they should scan files that are shared then.

Re: Dropbox deletes Rick and Morty creators account for secret TOS violation

#244

Post by dymk »

lovecg wrote: post #208
chrisseaton wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a backup. Any copy of your data is a backup. It just shouldn't be the only backup (obviously, like any backup.)

A copy of your data that can be easily modified (whether through bugs, malice, or even just you mistakenly deleting a file and Dropbox happily deleting it everywhere for you) is not a backup. It’s definitely way better than nothing, but people relying on Dropbox as the only “backup” will be in for nasty surprises occasionally.

Any backup which is the lone backup isn’t a backup at all.

Re: Dropbox deletes Rick and Morty creators account for secret TOS violation

#245

Post by nvrspyx »

codazoda wrote: post #125
taesu wrote: post #4

Are people still using dropbox? I thought other integrated service such as google drive and onedrive would have drove dropbox to the grave

I use and am happy with Dropbox. I was an early adopter of Google Drive (to try to save costs) and it never really worked right. There were lots of bugs with the syncing of data. My entire digital world is on Dropbox. I use (and pay for) Google Drive too, but I use it differently. It works for me because, in theory, all my data is on every HD in my house (which is really just two). So, I don't lose anything if Dropbo…

As far as I know, if you just have the files as "Keep local" or whatever, Dropbox will still delete them locally if it's removed from Dropbox. The only exception is if you're also using the backup feature to backup certain folders on your machine that's not in the Dropbox folder.

Re: Dropbox deletes Rick and Morty creators account for secret TOS violation

#246

Post by ziddoap »

TameAntelope wrote: post #226
ziddoap wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course I pointed and laughed at you, you were (and still are) acting very poorly towards others. A non-confrontational mention that a tone marker would have helped, which you turned into an attack somehow (?), then you took pedantry to a new level (not uncommon on HN, but lol), and then after other insults on the OPs intelligence you say that they are acting poorly? What a laugh.

Quoted post unavailable.

Communication is collaborative. If you can't accept the fact that sometimes someone might say "Hey, this would have helped me understand you better" without losing your mind over it, I feel sorry for anyone else you converse or collaborate with.

Shame on anyone who doesn't memorize comments from years ago. Or people with English as a 2nd+ language and may not glean the intricacies of written English that you think are so obvious.

Re: Dropbox deletes Rick and Morty creators account for secret TOS violation

#247

Post by weberer »

shkkmo wrote: post #46
smoldesu wrote: post #39

Hopefully this will stop HNers from linking everyone ye olde "this is why Dropbox is better than your nerdass solution" comment, and hopefully it vindicates everyone over the years who countered that argument by asking what happens when Dropbox deletes your account apropos of nothing...

Unless your "nerdass solution" involves hosting your own server, then you don't have any additional protection.

How about a VPS? Are providers capable of scanning your VM's memory?

Re: Dropbox deletes Rick and Morty creators account for secret TOS violation

#248

Post by smaryjerry »

throwaway23234 wrote: post #223

Sounds like Microsoft's Onedrive is the way to go.

OneDrive is just not as simple as DropBox. Dropbox you know what you get, an online file system that syncs to your computer. OneDrive always asks to backup local files when that’s not what I want it for and doesn’t have an intuitive interface that just works. It’s too integrated with other Microsoft products.

Re: Dropbox deletes Rick and Morty creators account for secret TOS violation

#249

Post by temp8964 »

malux85 wrote: post #237
temp8964 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But do they have to delete the flagged account directly? Also, can't they distinguish a spam account from a legit account based on the account history? I can't see why this is a difficult problem to solve.

Actual LOL Have you ever tried to fight spam at scale? It’s trivial to block the 50% of obvious spam accounts, but we are at the stage of humanity where the activity of very dumb humans and the activity of very clever bots, EASILY overlap. A lot. Bots will use proxies that use residential IPs, they will maintain session info (Cookies, User-Agents, etc) they will move the mouse and introduce jitter, their access patte…

How many spammers invest months / years to upload and modify content to fake legitimate user accounts?

Re: Dropbox deletes Rick and Morty creators account for secret TOS violation

#250

Post by IceWreck »

rkagerer wrote: post #134
IceWreck wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, SFTP + Syncthing + Filebrowser completely replaces Dropbox for me. Name one feature thats not present in this stack.

Can you right-click a large file (in your day-to-day file manager), hit Copy Link, and email the link to someone so they can download it (without having to give them any further credentials)?

Yeah why not. Thats why I mentioned filebrowser.
Post reply on HN