Too many users abused unlimited Dropbox plans, so they’re getting limits::Some people have taken “as much space as you need” too literally.

    • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      They didn’t mean unlimited use. They meant “sign up, forget about it and pay us forever”.

  • Rooty@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Users: Use the product as it was designed and advertised.

    Corporations:

  • jetsetdorito@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    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

  • Illecors@lemmy.cafe
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    I just don’t get it. If it’s unlimited - in what universe is using it beyond 15TB considered abuse?

    I get the reseller part, I get the stupid chia mining part. But if they can say that was the problem - then get rid of those users, as clearly you have already identified them. Don’t shift the blame away from your dumbass marketing team onto your users and play an innocent company.

    I can’t believe how much support dropbox is getting. People seem to accept, without questioning, every bollocks pr statement these days.

  • kefka@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Don’t use the fucking word unlimited if it has limits? Something that has a limit, no matter how high, is not unlimited.

  • Abnorc@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    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?

  • meseek #2982@lemmy.ca
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    You can’t abuse unlimited. That’s why it’s called “UNlimited.” I hate this two faced, corporate back sludge that always, and I mean always, puts it on the consumer as if they did something wrong. When in reality, it’s the company that is redlining or needs to boost those unsustainable goal of doubling revenue every quarter, ad infinitum.

    The real narrative is Dropbox needs money so they are scrambling to cut every expense. No matter what spin they put on it.

    • Mane25@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      If they were just honest about it and say “this is expensive so we need to put the prices up”, I would have a lot more respect for that.

    • yum13241@lemm.ee
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      You can DDOS using an “unlimited” VPS, and DDOS the same provider. Is that abuse? Of course it is. You can’t expect a for profit to allow people to upload petabytes of junk all at once.

      • eee@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        It depends on the ToS. DDoSing might be considered unreasonable use.

        But if you’re using VPS to stream 4K content 24/7, that would be heavy and reasonable use.

        Similarly, if I take the unlimited Dropbox plan and resell it, that’s probably against the ToS.

        If I’m uploading 50TB of blu ray rips for backups, that’s… Heavy use but entirely acceptable based on what they’re advertising.

        • yum13241@lemm.ee
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          For your last sentence, Dropbox can’t tell whether those are legitimate backups that the DMCA gives you the right to, or rips from a piracy site. Uploading data that’s all 1’s is just dumb and is designed to “test” the server, in the same way a teenager might test their stepdad.

      • meseek #2982@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        Just violating the TOS, which means you are using a service or product outside its intended usage.

        Downloading from a plan that has no cap, even if you download a lot, is simply making use of the service for its intended purpose. (Which obviously isn’t to DDOS someone.)

        Why you’re defending DB here, a faceless corporation, is probably a better point of discussion.

        • yum13241@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          You shouldn’t try to benchmark some random server by uploading and downloading files that consist of the bytes FF repeatedly. Store all the crap you want, just don’t ruin it for others.

  • uis@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    “Abused” service they were advertised. Now it is misadvertisement.

  • Mane25@feddit.uk
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    I remember in the 90s, my dial-up provider started offering an “unmetered” plan with no per minute charge (for younger people, believe it or not we were once charged by the minute for connecting to the internet). After a short while we were inundated with emails from the ISP complaining that people were “abusing the service” by going on the internet for “hours at a time”. Just reminded me of this and how it’s an old excuse.

    No, you can’t “abuse” an unlimited service by using too much, it’s unlimited.

    • lagomorphlecture@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Can you even imagine how lame someone’s life must be to go on the Internet for hours at a time though? Oh wait…

  • raptir@lemdro.id
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    1 year ago

    This reminds me of how Skype always had limits in the fine print of its unlimited calling plan back in the day when we paid for minutes on cellphones.

    Or, y’know, how current cellphone data plans are only unlimited up until the point where you’ve used enough and then become “deprioritized.”

    Or how backblaze offers unlimited plans on Windows and Mac but not on Linux because Linux users tend to actually know how much storage they’re using.

    Companies have a number that is the profitable point for whatever unlimited plan they’re offering. They just want to be able to advertise “unlimited” since that’s what customers want and they hope people don’t go over their “profitable usage” metric.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    This was intended to free business users from needing to worry about quotas.

    The company said in a blog post yesterday that it was retiring its unlimited storage policy specifically because people were buying Dropbox Advanced accounts “for purposes like crypto and Chia mining, unrelated individuals pooling storage for personal use cases, or even instances of reselling storage.”

    Dropbox also says that this behavior has been getting worse recently because other services have also been placing caps on their storage plans—at some point within the last year, Google also removed similar “as much as you need” language from its Google Workspace plans.

    Rather than attempting to police behavior or play whack-a-mole with the people abusing the service, Dropbox has imposed a 15TB cap on organizations with three or fewer users.

    An additional 5TB per user can be added on top of that, with a maximum cap of 1,000TB per organization.

    New customers will be affected by this policy change immediately, as you’ll see if you check the current pricing for Dropbox Advanced plans.


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