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Dropbox deletes Rick and Morty creators account for secret TOS violation

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

#261
post #58

Isn't it pointless to discuss this without knowing more about the communications that happened?

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.

Why shouldn't they be able to know/inspect/scan the content that they are physically storing?

I'm genuinely curious the logic.

From my perspective, they're a company providing a service and can determine the terms upon which they'll provide it. You don't have to use them if you don't like it.

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

#262
post #184

>secret TOS violation Given the source (a comedian), this part sounds like hyperbole, not evidence of an actual "secret TOS"

He doesn't mean that the ToS is secret. He means that it's secret how you violated their ToS. In other words, they tell you you violated ToS but no additional information.

"secret ToS-violation" not "secret-ToS violation." got it, yours makes more sense :)

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

#263
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the only solution still that "just works" on all OSs and mobile devices. I spent a year trying to use alternatives like Syncthing and Resilio and they all have pain points, especially on mobile. Gave up and just paid for Dropbox. I would gladly self host if there was an option that worked well on mobile.

I've been using Nextcloud and before that Owncloud for years. I recently switched to the native mobile client from a generic web DAV client. It supports one way sync for things like photos which is very handy. My home NC has around 1/2TB in use so far. I also look after another one for a company with several 1000 users' safety docs on it. Nearly all the clients are mobiles and tablets using the native client. This NC…

+1 to Nextcloud. It works really well and you own the data completely.

Office document editing experience isn’t the best on mobile but I don’t use that feature anyway. Markdown editing works well.

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

#264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO, the problem started when we all jumped on Gmail, knowing that there was no support, and if it broke, we got to keep both pieces. I watched my wife's account get taken over in real time a couple years ago. Ten years of personal and financial info, now in the hands of God-knows-who for God-knows-why. I simply deleted the account from her devices, and moved on. There was nothing I could do, and no one I could comp…

>> IMHO, the problem started when we all jumped on Gmail, knowing that there was no support Back when Gmail was invite-only, most people used Hotmail or Yahoo Mail, which would offer a base level of (I think) about 50-100MB of storage at the time. If you wanted more storage; you'd have to pay for your email service - an idea I don't think anyone born past 2000 has even heard of. Gmail came along, and suddenly offers…

Other competing services gave you 2-5MB, which was so low that the standard thing to do was to delete email after you read it.

The selling feature of Gmail was "Now you can keep all your mail and have a permanent searchable history of all your electronic communication".

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

#265

I use ResilioSync (formerly Bittorrent Sync) for my personal Dropbox-like stuff. The iOS client is sparse but functional, and it has clients for pretty much every OS I need, including arm Debian... so I have my 'not-quite-Dropbox' home on a Raspberry Pi. We also use it to cross-backup photo libraries with an avid photographer friend who lives across town. It works very, very well.

I use Syncthing, which is similar to ResilioSync. Syncthing doesn't have as many features as ResilioSync, but its completely free and open source.

How’s Syncthing’s iOS situation these days? Does the app work well?

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

#266
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, then docker compose some Nextcloud on it, that’ll be some 20 lines? Add some more for Treafik for the let’s encrypt certs.

Asking a non technical person to run and maintain docker containers is absurd.

OP suggested SFTP, CVS and a $5 VPS.

I'm suggesting a 30 line yaml file and the occasional `docker-compose pull && docker-compose up -d`.

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

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

SyncThing is actually really good. The main issue is integrations. A lot of mobile apps work with Dropbox but not with decent FOSS alternatives.

Syncthing also has untrusted hosts support now: you can sync your files to a host you don't trust, and it keeps them encrypted on the destination.

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

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

SyncThing is actually really good. The main issue is integrations. A lot of mobile apps work with Dropbox but not with decent FOSS alternatives.

The main issue is you can accidentally nuke your own source directory and it's possible to do so in non-obvious ways. This has happened to me a few times (though thankfully had backups elsewhere).

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

#269
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I hope we're a long way away from VPS providers doing automated scanning for content rather than dealing with potential copyright infringement on a complaint basis.

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

#270
post #216
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

> I don't think it is something that needs legislation

Why not?

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