I think the lesson here is that you should always save (backup) your data on storage (services) and never on functional services. And this certainly includes Google, Apple and Microsoft Photos.
Want your images back? That'll be $5
211–220 of 286 posts
Re: Want your images back? That'll be $5
#212Earlier 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.
Dunno about that near-blackmail scenario, but 23andMe filed for Chapter 11 last year and the database was sold for $305m.
Re: Want your images back? That'll be $5
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Dunno about that near-blackmail scenario, but 23andMe filed for Chapter 11 last year and the database was sold for $305m.
And the government is sleeping and mostly worried about how to implement id verification........
Re: Want your images back? That'll be $5
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 e…
Fair enough. I don't use Facebook at all because I don't respect or trust the company or it's mission. I do use Gemini and Claude though.
Why? What has Google or Anthropic done that suggests they are trust worthy? Google is infamous for not not being evil. It's not like either asked for permission to access copyrighted material either. Not one tech company deserves trust. They all should be treated as suspect. I don't expect anyone to trust anything I make for the simple reason I don't trust anything anyone else makes.
Re: Want your images back? That'll be $5
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this still true? I am a Flickr Pro user and the few times I've let my subscription lapse, I recall that I could only see my most recent 200 uploaded photos until I paid up again. They didn't delete them, for sure! But they were inaccessible.
...or $11 for a month, and you can cancel it? Where do people think the money comes from to store gigs and gigs of photos literally forever?
Keep in mind that this is a brand which has offered 1TB free in the past. They kinda only have themselves to blame for any minimum-price assumptions.
Re: Want your images back? That'll be $5
#216I don't necessarily mean this to be dismissive, but it'll come off like that and it is what it is: Don't go through life getting this mad at something so inconsequential (five dollars). The typical response is "its the principal", but they're not beholden to your principals, and getting worked up because someone else compromised your principals is not healthy. Its just other people doing things. Neither money nor pri…
I get your point, but wouldn't that be exactly what bad actors want you to do? Normalcy bias is a great help to them
Possibly, but the real issue is more subtle: The people who need to hear this literally won't hear your anger. They're not reading HackerNews. They'll never see this blog post. They won't hear your screams. Your emotions will never be validated; we're in an echo chamber, and the people who most need to hear it won't hear it.
There's no indication that the original blog post author ever actually contacted Photobucket. Nor, would I believe, anyone in these comments tried to. We're just people on some small, isolated corner of the internet letting some dumb SaaS product ruin your day.
Re: Want your images back? That'll be $5
#217I don't necessarily mean this to be dismissive, but it'll come off like that and it is what it is: Don't go through life getting this mad at something so inconsequential (five dollars). The typical response is "its the principal", but they're not beholden to your principals, and getting worked up because someone else compromised your principals is not healthy. Its just other people doing things. Neither money nor pri…
steals from you
"lol, u mad?"
Re: Want your images back? That'll be $5
#218I have received the email that my photobucket account is going to be deleted, so I've logged in after who knows how many years and got offered the same thing, to subscribe. Instead I've went to close the account and in the process (or somewhere else, don't remember exactly) there was an option to first download all the data which I've used and got the images back (there were just a few as I haven't used the service r…
> there was an option to first download all the data which I've used and got the images back (there were just a few as I haven't used the service really), then I've closed the account. There was no need to subscribe. Does Photobucket make it clear that this is an option, or did you discover it by accident? I don't get that sense from TFA. If it was unclear, this is still a shitty dark pattern. The wording implies tha…
I would have had no idea if it weren't for this post. It isn't displayed or acknowledged ANYWHERE on any page, through 3 or 4 pages of "Are you SURE you want to delete your account? You could pay us $5 per month in a different way to pay for 1TB of 'cold storage' instead? How does that sound?"
Only once you get to the final page of account deletion does it give you a single link that says "Request data download" or something.
Re: Want your images back? That'll be $5
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Dunno about that near-blackmail scenario, but 23andMe filed for Chapter 11 last year and the database was sold for $305m.
People are rightly worried about that, but is there any indication that it nullifies any privacy contracts around the data? Is it:
1) We know that legally privacy terms to data are still binding, and those worried about it are freaking out over nothing,
2) We know that those contracts are null and void, and there are no restrictions on what can be done with that data beyond blanket legal protections to such biological data, or
3) It's an open legal question
I don't understand the legal terms of something like this in bankruptcy, if the data are seen as being separated from the contractual obligations that acquired them.
Re: Want your images back? That'll be $5
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many knew this 20 years ago, as well.
Nobody knew it 20 years ago. SaaS was just taking off. The word "cloud" was barely a thing.
AJAX was 1999. Ruby on rails was 2004. The hazards of having your application experience and data subject to the whims of whomever controlled the server were glaringly apparent when your friend showed you a site they built and then tinkered with the data behind the scenes. It was straightforward to extrapolate that dynamic to businesses that had little plan besides grow their number of users at all costs, at least for those not in denial about the incentives of market actors.