Tell HN: Dropbox user age verification feature can lock your account

The inconvenience isn't important when it's an outlier event.

Does everyone bungle their Skype account profile 3 times a day or did it happen to one person out of millions and only one time in that person's life?

For outlier cases, any form of redress at all is ok. All that really matters is that there IS a procedure at all and it is doable (doesn't cost $1000 or require something impossible). Unlike say getting your google/gmail account fixed when there is no such thing as a google customer support # you can call to fix things that the automated processes got wrong.

The only problem I see is the discrepency between creating and updating.

If there is a valid reason to require proof of age to update an account from child to adult, then by rights exactly that same proof should be required to create the account in the first place.

then the convenience matters, and there should be some more practical way to supply something which is legally accepted as good enough, and that should be the same for both creation and update.

I don't think we really have that "something", especially not globally and absolutely positively not anonymously. By now, in most countries there is probably some form of standard ID that most people in the country either have or can get. But they are different for every country and definitely creates a first world discrimination filter.

Thinking about that, it seems like the whole idea is misguided and imvalid, unworkable. How would one do it? Even in a 1st world country and me having both a SSN and a drivers ID and or government ID, it still leaves the problem of anonymity and multiple/temp accounts etc, and still leaves the problem that I entered the wrong number which means probably someone ele's number, which means someone else could enter mine...so there needs to be a mechanism to prove that I own the number I entered, which there is no such mechanism. Maybe if ID#'s were really key pairs and you never simply entered a number but instead signed something or proved that you could decrypt something signed, but that is a high tech fantasy world we aren't quite in yet.

Kids should be protected from those who would exploit them, but requiring proof of age to use on-line services isn't a functioning way to do it.

If it's possible to save and access files from any browser, from any location, set up an automatically syncing folder, and selectively share access with others, then you have an alternative to dropbox, and all the other cloud personal storage services. All of which nextcloud can do.

The differences just mean you don't prefer that particular alternative the same way as if you didn't like the color scheme, or more realistically say the need to make a microsoft account for onedrive, or the way google probably scans the contents of google drive etc.

They are all still alternatives with various pros & cons.

Setting up your own nextcloud on a publicly accessible service is no different.

The cons like effort and cost are noted.

The pro is there is no one else in control of your stuff and it's impossible to lose your account due to some age verification, or any other reason like "communiy standards" or billing dispute. The worst that can happen is your hosting provider can drop you, but that is a commodity and there are infinite other hosting providers and methods. Keep your own mirror so you don't care even if the hosting provider deletes everything.

If any alternative to dropbox has to be identical in every detail to qualify, then it has exactly the same problems as well. An alternative actually has to be different in some way or else it's not an alternative but just more of the same, and there is no point in that.

So your friend is in the market to buy a house and tells you about an issue with a particular realtor they are having, and you say...

"I got a great alternative, you can buy a piece of land, rezone it, get permits, go chop down your own wood, build your own house with your bare hands..."

They say to you, I hate my realtor... I don't hate my job. What you're suggesting as an alternative is more like saying that building your own car is an alternative to buying one. They aren't in the same league, and so while it makes sense for people to resell or offer Nextcloud as an option for self-hosted solutions or security, it makes no sense to try to say they are an alternative to Dropbox.

> The differences just mean you don't prefer that particular alternative the same way as if you didn't like the color scheme, or more realistically say the need to make a microsoft account for onedrive, or the way google probably scans the contents of google drive etc.

The differences doesn't mean that I don't like it, in fact I self host a lot of my own solutions. I'm just saying they don't really compare or compete.

Sure, if you want to purchase an array of servers that are distributed across multiple regions and setup a Ceph cluster to distribute storage in a resilient manner then go ahead. By all means do it, but to act like that somehow compares to purchasing a service that already does this is just misleading. After that person spends tens of thousands of dollars to replicate what Dropbox does, then they can finally have an alternative that they never thought of before paying $12/mo. for Dropbox.

OneDrive works with rclone, which supports mounting and now bisyncing, and there are third party clients that work just like the official client.