Too many users abused unlimited Dropbox plans, so they’re getting limits::Some people have taken “as much space as you need” too literally.
You can’t abuse something that has no limit. Stop calling things unlimited and then blaming users when they are not.
I read somewhere about someone who took a zip file, copied it and zipped it with the copy over and over again until the file size ballooned to petabytes. I would consider that sort of pointless use of storage to be abuse.
Then put an * and say that there are a couple well documented exceptions, like zip bombing or don’t call it unlimited and call it up to 100TB for x dollars.
Aaaand? It’s like if phone companies called dial-up abuse.
Sure you can, they did it here. All you can eat buffet doesn’t mean I should take all the crab legs every time they bring out a new tray.
You either get it or you don’t. But these people who abuse and exploit things are why we will never have nice things
Sounds like your buffet should plan for more crab legs to be made each time
Why, you know there isn’t mythical endless and free source of crab legs right?
Nobody should reasonably think there is. “Endless” is advertising. You’re suppose to still respect that its a business and that other people will want some as well.
Yea but all you can eat buffets have a clear limit: The stomach size of the guests. It’s not an unlimited dinner. It’s specifically limited to the amount you can eat. (Besides that, a lot of all you can eat places have a time limit of an hour or sth).
If dropbox or google offer unlimited storage, then it’s only reasonable to use that storage. After all, that’s what you signed up for. It’s not abuse if they tell me it’s okay beforehand. As long as the terms of service don’t specify a limit, there is none. And if the terms of service do specify a limit, then unlimited is false advertising. If they don’t want you to use as much data as you like, they should have called it the 20TB plan or whatever they see as reasonable.
A way to offer unlimited storage but “cripple” it enough, so users won’t fill your server quicker than you‘d like, would be to only allow a certain size of uploads per month. So you have unlimited storage but you can only upload, say, a 100GB a month. That way, it‘d take almost a year to fill up a Terabyte and you can still claim unlimited storage. That would of course also cause backlash but you could technically still offer unlimited storage.
Yes all that works and better. It still shouldn’t change that I should also recognize that taking a service to its limits would cause me and others to lose it.
But there weren’t limits… it was unlimited…
And that’s not reasonable to anybody who is going to upload 20TB. Every party involved knew what would happen
Unlimited is unlimited. It’s what was advertised. I am sorry Dropbox failed to look up the word before using it in marketing. The customers are using it as the advertising said it could be. Not the fault of the customer for using to product as intended.
Just don’t call those things unlimited then?
Calling unlimited shouldn’t mean that people upload things that are not reasonable. The issue here isn’t calling it unlimited because a reasonable person gets that its a gimmick that will have limits. Pushing it to that limit is the problem.
I feel anyone should assume there are limits because there is nothing in this universe that is unlimited.
I can reason what it actually means and that there is a point I would be abusing the system.
The amount of cool things I have lost out on because another person abused a system might be close to unlimited. It gets tiring after a while. Anyone remember steam sales before they were forced to offer refunds and people started to abuse that.
Id rather not have guard rails everywhere in life to stop me from being abusive. But abusive people exist and force the rest of us to live with the consequences of their actions
Corporate bootlickers: OMG they’re actually using our unlimited service as if they were unlimited. THIS IS ABUSE!1!
Or there is actually a limit to storage.
You’re right. Then we agree that Dropbox promoting “unlimited storage” is false advertising.
everything here is wrong, and blaming the users is wrong. Please try to read past the PR speak. and shame on ars for not doing that.
the unlimited plan is going away to force companies that were using it, to switch to their new unlimited plan which is now called Enterprise and will generate a lot more money for them. The plan still exists, they’ve changed the requirements so you can only get it if you spend a lot of money.
Then it was never unlimited to begin with, wtf?
Users: Use the product as it was designed and advertised.
Corporations:
Like when Microsoft took away unlimited OneDrive and wrote a passive aggressive blog post about how some dude used it to store like 75TB of movies
Eh… If you offer unlimited you have to live with unlimited.
Fuck these people but thats also on Dropbox.
What they meant to say was “We didn’t have the foresight to monetize these heavy users, so we will be doing that now. But first we’ll create the problem…”
Don’t use the fucking word unlimited if it has limits? Something that has a limit, no matter how high, is not unlimited.
Calling it “abuse” is a weird PR move. If your service is good enough, this is bound to happen with an unlimited storage plan. This is basically a win on their part since they got people to sign up for their service. Why shame your user base?
“Abused”? Is it unlimited or not? I don’t see how as much as you need can be taken too literally. It’s either true or it isn’t.
“Abused” service they were advertised. Now it is misadvertisement.
I always hated the term unlimited when it’s not really unlimited. Is it really abuse if you’re using it as intended?Edit: I eat my words. People are assholes. I thought this was referring to providers of unlimited storage or bandwidth, only to say “oh, you’ve using it too much, so we’re going to throttle you.”
I think you are right the first time.
“Unlimited “ only ever an advertising term, to garner attention. No one ever intends to deliver on it .
I remember when google photos offered unlimited when it first came out. Called that off pretty damn quick
I just want to add a surprising fact. My mobile carrier does actually deliver on the promise of unlimited data, and an ISP is the last company that I would trust.
How much can you use before your speed gets throttled?
I can try it, but my current record s 50 GB in a singled day. The only thing that it wants is a conformation via SMS for every 18 or so GB, but that is only if you use that much in a single day.
My only concern about throttling it as 5TB for small organizations is that I could see that being a problem for freelance video editors. 8K video can take up a lot of space.
At some point though I feel like if someone would be using Dropbox for 8k videos, they should be wondering if they are using the right solution for their needs. I would say absolutely not.
Temporary storage of, say, a documentary with hundreds of hours of video so it can be transferred from the cameras to the editor who is working remotely seems like exactly the sort of thing Dropbox is for.
Maybe I’m applying too much of my own personal use case for how I use tools like Dropbox then. I’m using it for documents I actually want synchronized between devices, with a cloud backup and history. I suppose if you’re looking at it for a cloud storage solution, ignoring the desktop sync aspect then I can see where that makes more sense.
I just have a hard time wrapping my head around using cloud storage for such large files being an optimal solution but then again if storage cost is the biggest objection, unlimited storage sounds like it’s removing said objection and you don’t have much choice if you’re working as a remote team so great point, I hadn’t thought about it like that.
It could also be good for a sharing solution, since putting it on dropbox, and sharing the link would be fairly simple compared to having to deal with the complications of sending larger videos in other ways.
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I’m glad I have a NAS.
But does your NAS has UNLIMITED storage?
It has more than I need for now. Isn’t that effectively unlimited? I could definitely see myself filling it up eventually as my media library grows, though.
