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Dropbox accounts created after Oct. 2012 won't have a public folder

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Re: Dropbox accounts created after Oct. 2012 won't have a public folder

#81

Post by jen729w »

I'm amazed that there wasn't an outcry the other month when they - just one day, with zero notice - renamed my shared folder and made it a Team folder.

Big deal? Well, they actually changed the name of the folder. And now I can't modify it. So yeah, big deal. I have Logic Pro templates that look there. They all broke. It wasn't too bad for me, but imagine if you had scripts or tools or whatever pointing to a file on your FS that happened to be in one of the affected folders. You woke up one morning and they were all broken.

You can't just rename people's files. That's not part of the social contract I have with you, Dropbox.

Re: Dropbox accounts created after Oct. 2012 won't have a public folder

#82

Post by bigiain »

baby wrote: post #17
wging wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

S3 buckets with the website feature enabled, but you have to pay for usage and I don't know of a way to emulate Dropbox's local filesystem integration with S3... at least not one that's accessible for nontechnical users.

That's already complicated + not free.

That's kinda the problem - why _should_ this be free?

If it matters at all to you, you can host a huge amount for static website content for single digit dollars per year on S3.

If it's not worth that much to you, who in their right mind will build a service based on providing that to you at your price point? And if they _have_ a service where the marginal cost of you not-caring-enough-to-pay makes little difference, you should - as this Dropbox change demonstrates - fully expect that "feature" to go away when the costs or support (or legal problems) get noticed.

Re: Dropbox accounts created after Oct. 2012 won't have a public folder

#83

Post by mynameisvlad »

onli wrote: post #20
cpg wrote: post #11

I relied on this "light" publishing for a few things and I'm quite pissed off. I did not notice any notification on this. To me, this should be done very very visibly and with tons of warnings. I used it to communicate screenshots with details, etc. Now all links are broken and I'm SOL with no viable solution to changing those links from documents, bugs, etc., etc. Very very very bad!

Oh, they definitely notified their users. There were emails and warnings in the UI, it was very visible. Really, you can't blame Dropbox there. However, one can still blame Dropbox for the change itself. I used this on several occasions, including hosting archives for academic publications. No way in hell I can change those links. Maybe that wasn't a wise choice, but at that time it looked like a good way: The link d…

Anecdotally speaking, also didn't get any notifications about this.

I have an email about the new ToS 12/28, and a research survey request on 12/11, plus the regular login emails I receive, but absolutely nothing about this over the last few months.

I also just checked, and my public folder has been downgraded to a regular one, so I am part of the post-2012 signups.

Re: Dropbox accounts created after Oct. 2012 won't have a public folder

#84

Post by bigiain »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #48

The second most useful feature of Dropbox (beyond being "a folder that syncs"), gone. I'm very sad about this, even though I knew it was coming. This is literally the case of "we can't have nice things because $reasons".

For me, this was the most-used feature. "a folder that syncs" was a nice side effect.

(I know - I'm clearly not "their most valuable customer segment" - if I was them I'd probably be breaking my irrelevant-to-them shit too...)

Re: Dropbox accounts created after Oct. 2012 won't have a public folder

#85

Post by manigandham »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #80
toomuchtodo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This mostly sounds like DB is out of areas they want to / feel they can succeed in tapping for new customers and thus they attempt to cut back on costs with the hope of inertia retaining the existing users. I'm okay with how Dropbox as-is as a Pro user, and have no problem giving them $100/year in perpetuity. A product must not constantly evolve/improve for it to succeed (I'm looking at you Github with your damn da…

> A product must not constantly evolve/improve for it to succeed Unfortunately, it goes against the startup ethos. That's why I avoid using startup products whenever I can. With regular companies, the problem is less pronounced, though it exists nonetheless. It's sad people have to keep fucking up things they first made work, only because they're looking for more profit.

Dropbox isn't a startup. It stopped being that a long time ago.

Re: Dropbox accounts created after Oct. 2012 won't have a public folder

#86

Post by i336_ »

alainv wrote: post #31

Title is evidently incorrect: the link itself clearly states they just disabled this functionality for Free accounts. I can verify it still works for Pro/Plus accounts with existing Public folders.

I agree. I would recommend "(2012, 2017)" to succinctly clarify that this is somehow relevant to right now and that further investigation is needed.

Note: I have flagged the parent comment so that it shows up for the moderators (and also upvoted it to counteract the impact of flagging). So, nobody else needs to flag it - if too many people do so it might go [dead].

Re: Dropbox accounts created after Oct. 2012 won't have a public folder

#87

Post by NegativeLatency »

jen729w wrote: post #81

I'm amazed that there wasn't an outcry the other month when they - just one day, with zero notice - renamed my shared folder and made it a Team folder. Big deal? Well, they actually changed the name of the folder. And now I can't modify it. So yeah, big deal. I have Logic Pro templates that look there. They all broke. It wasn't too bad for me, but imagine if you had scripts or tools or whatever pointing to a file on…

Simlink to it?

Re: Dropbox accounts created after Oct. 2012 won't have a public folder

#88

Post by slg »

bigiain wrote: post #78
filleokus wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just guessing, but might they have had something in their EULA / TOS up until October 4:th 2012 that somehow forces them to keep the Public folder available? Maybe some language about how features are removed /deprecated, or about how changes in the EULA / TOS are allowed to be done, that makes it infeasible to do without breaking the contract?

Maybe just coincidental, but while I was searching thru Dropbox mail looking for details for another reply here, I noticed this message from Aug 26th 2016: "We’re reaching out to let you know that if you haven’t updated your Dropbox password since mid-2012, you’ll be prompted to update it the next time you sign in. This is purely a preventative measure, and we’re sorry for the inconvenience."

2012 was apparently when Dropbox had 68 million email addresses and hashed passwords compromised. It just took 4 years for anyone to find out about it.

Re: Dropbox accounts created after Oct. 2012 won't have a public folder

#89

Post by the_af »

ovao wrote: post #79
TeMPOraL wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The core benefit of Dropbox is being "a folder that syncs". They've pretty much nailed it at the very start, and all the recent changes seem to be only step backwards. Lack of ability to link directly to files (instead of their heavy and useless web UI with "download" button) is something that makes their product worse, from user's POV.

Although it involves a redirect, so it's not, per se, direct , appending ?dl=1 to a Dropbox link does at least trigger a file download.

This is not useful for hotlinking pictures, for example for embedding them in a forum.

Re: Dropbox accounts created after Oct. 2012 won't have a public folder

#90

Post by onli »

morganvachon wrote: post #55
onli wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, they definitely notified their users. There were emails and warnings in the UI, it was very visible. Really, you can't blame Dropbox there. However, one can still blame Dropbox for the change itself. I used this on several occasions, including hosting archives for academic publications. No way in hell I can change those links. Maybe that wasn't a wise choice, but at that time it looked like a good way: The link d…

> Maybe that wasn't a wise choice, but at that time it looked like a good way: The link did not give a clue about my identity, making peer review easier, and DB being a well-funded and known internet company those links were surely meant to work forever, cool URLs don't change is something they had to know. Boy was I wrong. I also fell into the trap (back when I had an active Dropbox account) of using the Public fold…

> I think we both could have avoided that trap by setting up a small storage VPS with a provider like Digital Ocean or Vultr and installing a document management system.

That can break though. And admittedly, I didn't want to have costs for this, especially not re-occuring, being a student at the time. I could have asked my university/IT to take care of this, but that would have meant bureaucracy and a long waiting time, time I did not have.

I wasn't even an active DB user at that time anymore, having moved away when Condoleezza Rice joined. But the way they are handling this I only get more convinced that was the right choice. It is one thing removing functionality, it is another breaking links. At least they should have a way to manually share files, and let them have the exact same link they had before. But I guess that is only of interest for people with an interest in technology, a demographic DB is not interested in anymore.

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