Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage? • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?

#221

Post by subscribed » Fri, Apr 10, 2026, 1:43 PM UTC

tredre3 wrote: post #83

jmcphers wrote: post #24

Google is no better. My family mostly uses iPhones, and on a big extended family vacation, I suggested we use Google Photos to create a shared album to document the trip. Everyone installed the Google Photos app on their iPhone so they could contribute... which resulted in all of them having their email accounts disabled . What happened? Google Photos on the iPhone backs up all your photos by default, and, like Micro…

> The minute Google Photos was installed, it started backing up photos Just to be clear: It will ask you before doing it. If you refuse, it will ask you again and again and again. Sometimes with a slightly different prompt. Until you accidentally say yes. But it does ask you. Even though I agree with your overall conclusion that people should avoid google photos, this moment should also be a learning experience for y…

It keeps asking every 1-2 days for me.

I don't use Photo because of this **t anymore except for Panoramas (ie very rarely).

Re: Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?

#222

Post by subscribed » Fri, Apr 10, 2026, 1:44 PM UTC

fg137 wrote: post #102

jmcphers wrote: post #24

Google is no better. My family mostly uses iPhones, and on a big extended family vacation, I suggested we use Google Photos to create a shared album to document the trip. Everyone installed the Google Photos app on their iPhone so they could contribute... which resulted in all of them having their email accounts disabled . What happened? Google Photos on the iPhone backs up all your photos by default, and, like Micro…

To be fair, Google sends out multiple emails notifying that you won't receive new emails unless you upgrade or clear things out. If they read their emails even somewhat regularly -- which I acknowledge isn't a given for many people -- they'd know what's coming.

That may as well take a couple hours if you're on a fast internet connection. Easily spent chatting with friends over coffee and cheesecake.

Re: Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?

#223

Post by debugnik » Fri, Apr 10, 2026, 1:46 PM UTC

zuminator wrote: post #144

debugnik wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it started backing up photos until the paltry free tier was reached How could everyone fill their 15 GiB quota when IIRC by default it only backups the camera roll with lossy compression? Also I've never heard of accounts getting disabled for filling the quota.

It's not just the photos that you take going forward, but all the photos you already have stored on the device.

I know, but that's still thousands of photos at original quality, let alone with the default compression, for each member of their extended family present, not just some of them. I barely know a couple people stockpiling more photos than that, let alone an entire family.

Re: Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?

#224

Post by debugnik » Fri, Apr 10, 2026, 1:51 PM UTC

subscribed wrote: post #220

debugnik wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it started backing up photos until the paltry free tier was reached How could everyone fill their 15 GiB quota when IIRC by default it only backups the camera roll with lossy compression? Also I've never heard of accounts getting disabled for filling the quota.

It's 2026, year of decent cameras. 70 seconds long 4K video is 2GB.

Fair enough, I was thinking actual photos. Still, the whole extended family present had that much stockpiled on their phones? Still sounds unbelievable to me IDK.

Re: Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?

#225

Post by jcalvinowens » Fri, Apr 10, 2026, 1:59 PM UTC

I've been replacing old windows machines with raspberry pi fives for my extended family. They all love them!

The cost makes the biggest difference: everybody is resistant, but caves and tries it when I say it only costs $100.

Re: Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?

#226

Post by anon7000 » Fri, Apr 10, 2026, 2:16 PM UTC

joshstrange wrote: post #214

I'm shocked that I can't find a single top-level comment that understands that the general public does not back up their data. We can call OneDrive a dark pattern or saving customer's butts from themselves. If it wasn't the default: "What do you mean all my pictures are gone forever because I never turned on OneDrive?". I have no love for Microsoft but I'm having a really hard time seeing how it isn't the smart defau…

You have a point, but it doesn’t matter: at the end of the day, 5GB is not nearly enough for most folk’s important backups (photos), and the fact it consumes your email storage and you can’t receive emails is the dark pattern.

Maybe this default makes sense… if MS was generously giving everyone a couple hundred GB. Otherwise it’s a cash-grab.

Everyone else does it too, which also sucks. They just don’t fill it all up as quickly. Though iMessage in iCloud is a good comparison bc pictures people send you fill up iCloud FAST. Thing is, you can still receive iMessages and use everything just fine — you just can’t backup your phone any more.

Re: Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?

#227

Post by rng-concern » Fri, Apr 10, 2026, 3:07 PM UTC

My wife ran into something similar to this. Microsoft changed the bucket that email attachments went into for quota purposes. She had a lot of emails with pictures attached, so was immediately above the new quota, and she stopped receiving emails.

This definitely puts a fire under one, as she had to quickly under pressure (as each day was missed emails), figure out which emails to keep/backup.

We signed her up for a new gmail immediately.

The experience was stressful. Very poor.

Re: Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?

#228

Post by ProllyInfamous » Fri, Apr 10, 2026, 3:09 PM UTC

cromka wrote: post #62

kn100 wrote: post #20

I got caught out by exactly this, and I'm not exactly tech illiterate. what made it even more annoying is by the time I'd realised what had happened, it was practically impossible to get the files back out of OneDrive (since I decided that this was enough Windows for me, and went back to Linux), since the webui does NOT handle downloading lots of small files well, and you just end up getting a partially complete zip…

I had same exact experience with macOS and iCloud. macOS by default enables offloading Documents to cloud, transparently. Problem is if you try to get those files back to store them offline, it gets very tricky very quickly with ambiguous verbiage and lengthy process that you never actually know status of. I ended up losing some files as a result, which came as a total shock to me. I was already in the process of mov…

Add these to your PiHole (DNS blacklist):

*.icloud.com

*.apple.com

*.apple-cloudkit.com

*.apple.akamaiedge.com

You can then manage OS updates via http://www.MrMacintosh.com/>'s instructions (requires USB media).

If you don't want to do this, you should still add:

smoot.apple.com (to blacklist)

...unless you like each Spotlight keystroke being timestampsent to Apple servers.

----

This will disable a lot of "features"

—OldMan (primarily Mac owner since 1992)

Re: Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?

#229

Post by ValentineC » Fri, Apr 10, 2026, 4:21 PM UTC

t_mahmood wrote: post #161

doubled112 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if rclone would have behaved any better than the web UI.

Sorry if I'm reiterating known point, when the storage is full, API will stop working, so you won't be able to download files at all. So you are completely stuck if you have too many files. Like I had. I used to keep pictures on onedrive, and used 6 user license. When the license expired, they locked me out completely. I couldn't download my own files! And the web UI is a crap. So had to pay again for a year, this ti…

> Sorry if I'm reiterating known point, when the storage is full, API will stop working, so you won't be able to download files at all.

This sounds completely insane, and I won't be using OneDrive for non-throwaway uses again until it's fixed.

(OneDrive is my Arq backup destination since I have no idea what else to put the storage towards, but now I'm considering my options.)

Re: Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?

#230

Post by ValentineC » Fri, Apr 10, 2026, 4:24 PM UTC

rcxdude wrote: post #95

What's also irritating is that onedrive will use some kind of 'smart' caching system to delete the local copy of a file. Which is all fine and dandy until you need said file when you don't have an internet connection. Explaining this to users is very difficult, they just know that something broke and usually when it was very important. (OK, what's even more stupid is IT departments who don't understand that onedrive…

> What's also irritating is that onedrive will use some kind of 'smart' caching system to delete the local copy of a file. Which is all fine and dandy until you need said file when you don't have an internet connection.

So does the new Dropbox app that uses the macOS File Provider API.

I hate this change, and have no idea how to undo this change. I have selected all my folders in "Selective Sync", but most infrequently-accessed files still refuse to open without internet access and a short lag.