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Want your images back? That'll be $5

lutr.dev

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Re: Want your images back? That'll be $5

#191

Post by calc_exe »

joshstrange wrote: post #46

If ever there was a use-case for chargebacks, this is it. Threaten their support to refund or you will file a chargeback, and then file one if they refuse.

Exactly. And I wouldn't threaten the chargeback. If they refuse the refund or ignore you, then just file a chargeback.

To me, ideally the end result is a chargeback instead a customer support refund. Otherwise they have no incentive to change. A high chargeback percentage could be that incentive.

I think the credit card companies expect you to attempt to talk it out with the merchant first though, so you'd still want to reach out to customer support first to "give them a chance".

Re: Want your images back? That'll be $5

#192

Post by tedggh »

This seems besides unethical also illegal. Never assume companies have good legal counsel, particularly in the LLMs era. There are consumer protection laws and in the US they are by state. Sometimes all it takes is completing a 5 min form in the state AG’s website. Sure, $5 is not a lot of money, but screw them.

Re: Want your images back? That'll be $5

#193

Post by Terr_ »

pastor_williams wrote: post #178
dylan604 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a devil's advocate, why do you trust the AI companies to behave as you suggest and not the other way? You say you have multitude of reasons, but list none. We have already seen by example that the AI companies do not care about laws and will circumvent societal norms as long as they get a leg up, so it's not a stretch to think they'd do things like this too.

It isn't just out of the kindness of their hearts that they don't do this. There are laws and regulations. There is also legal risk and reputation. I have to go through a legal and privacy process at my big corp job whenever I want to record a new timestamp and I need to ensure that the data is used appropriately and that it is wiped later. I've only seen these compliance requirements become more onerous over the pas…

> There are laws and regulations. There is also legal risk and reputation.

One of the big companies, Meta, already decided to go ahead and grab terabytes of pirated books to feed their LLM. [0]

Therefore I would not give them (or similar entities) the benefit of the doubt when it comes to how they might use text that customers "gave" them under some unreadably-favorable terms of service.

With PII, the pirated-books example is doubly-relevant, because the accusation of "this output is reproducing my copyright work" is very similar to "this output is revealing my private data". The fuzzy black-box nature of the algorithms offers ways to stymie enforcement, arguing that victims or regulators cannot conclusively prove a chain of cause with zero coincidences.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/03/libge...

Re: Want your images back? That'll be $5

#194

Post by joshstrange »

calc_exe wrote: post #191
joshstrange wrote: post #46

If ever there was a use-case for chargebacks, this is it. Threaten their support to refund or you will file a chargeback, and then file one if they refuse.

Exactly. And I wouldn't threaten the chargeback. If they refuse the refund or ignore you, then just file a chargeback. To me, ideally the end result is a chargeback instead a customer support refund. Otherwise they have no incentive to change. A high chargeback percentage could be that incentive. I think the credit card companies expect you to attempt to talk it out with the merchant first though, so you'd still want…

That's fair and the practices here do allow for immediate chargeback in my book. My suggestion for reaching out to support comes mostly from being on the other end of chargebacks and being frustrated when that's the first/only tool people reach for.

Chargebacks don't tell the full story, telling support "Hey you told me to pay $5 to see my pictures but there were no pictures. Give me my money or I'll file a chargeback" has a better chance of making it up the chain and changing policy. A chargeback on its own could mean any number of things and it's easier for management to write it off a "just fraud" or similar.

If you just want to screw the company but potentially not encourage them to change = Immediate chargeback

If you want to try and change the company's policies = Support + Chargeback if not fixed

I'm not making a judgement call either way, I think both are acceptable in this scenario. I'm just pointing out that if change is your real desire, the support route has better odds.

Re: Want your images back? That'll be $5

#195

Post by tedggh »

incanus77 wrote: post #135
ComputerGuru wrote: post #101

Shout out to Flickr! No matter how many gigabytes you had uploaded, you can still access them. You just can’t upload more without a Flickr Pro plan.

No, because I am dealing with this right now. I stopped paying for Flickr Pro after 20+ years and can only download my photos in bulk as 1024px resolution in order to get back under the free plan limits unless I pay for Flickr Pro… which is $82/year. My photos are held hostage unless I pay.

Have you tried this?

"if you ever need a copy of your data, members can always request and download their content, including original files, through the Flickr Data section of your settings."

Re: Want your images back? That'll be $5

#196

Post by kurthr »

Aurornis wrote: post #122
root-parent wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I predict that in the future, when you cancel an LLM subscription, they will threaten that unless you pay, to fully delete your anonymized chats, they will be public as paid training data. You know ...that is how we managed to offer you such a cheap subscription...

I wish there was some easy way to bet against this happening. I would put a lot of money on the side of this never happening for a multitude of reasons, but I bet I could collect a lot of money from cynics and doomers who think this stuff will happen.

Yeah, but someone at one of the LLM providers would bet against you and do it, just to take your money. If someone bets $100k your house doesn't burn down with pictures posted within 30min of it happening, it probably will.

Re: Want your images back? That'll be $5

#197

Post by fg137 »

doublepg23 wrote: post #179
realityfactchex wrote: post #169

What's the best alternative? Flickr? I don't want to self-host my photos, too much management. I don't want to use Apple or Google or MS Clouds for various reasons. I do want to support a pure-play, independent-ish, profitable, consumer friendly platform. To upload hires shots and have them easy to tag/share/access among those to whom they may be of interest. I expect to pay, but not through the nose. Reliability mat…

> I don't want to self-host my photos, too much management. I dunno https://immich.app is pretty painless IME.

You still need a host that provides a large storage and monthly bandwidth, which is becoming expensive. It doesn't take care of backups either.

Re: Want your images back? That'll be $5

#198

Post by lutr »

codazoda wrote: post #190

At least you were able to restore them. 25 years ago I was using the service and went a while without logging in. They deleted some of my favorite photos. They were photos I had taken with a cheap $20 digital camera (pushing it to it's limits). I hadn't backed my photo's up anywhere else so they were just lost. Edit: I see now that there were actually no photos to restore. A second question I wondered is if I could g…

This is 100% true.

I also lost all my old Yahoo accounts because I didn't log into them for >1 year. Same for a lot of videos I made on a nice little site called GoAnimate. So keeping data is better than removing it! Even charging a fee feels fair-ish.

But forcing me to sign up for a subscription on an account I don't actually even have any data? Weeeelll, this doesn't feel so nice :)

Re: Want your images back? That'll be $5

#199

Post by varun_ch »

inigyou wrote: post #57
varun_ch wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world would be a better place if you made money by providing value to people. Instead of extorting them.

Don't you value your childhood photos?

If I trusted my friend to hold onto my childhood photo collection as a favor, and then came back to find him asking for $5 to return it, and I reluctantly agree only to find him empty handed, I wouldn't consider that providing value.

Re: Want your images back? That'll be $5

#200

Post by msdz »

locknitpicker wrote: post #144
root-parent wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I predict that in the future, when you cancel an LLM subscription, they will threaten that unless you pay, to fully delete your anonymized chats, they will be public as paid training data. You know ...that is how we managed to offer you such a cheap subscription...

> (...) your anonymized chats, they will be public as paid training data. If they are PII then under GDPR they are obligated to delete the data. If not then they will be liable to pay fines up to $20 million or 4% of their total global turnover.

You forgot about the best part, in terms of the “GDPR threat” effectiveness:

Fines can be up to €20 million or 4% of global revenues…, _whichever is greater._

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