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Too many users abused unlimited Dropbox plans, so they’re getting limits
(arstechnica.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
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
Why do you get to decide what is reasonable? I could see pro videographers shooting in 4k easily hitting that mark just doing their job. You're acting like this was a case of trolls ruining it for normal people when you have literally zero evidence that it wasn't people just using it how they were told it could be used. If you have bad actors abusing your system, the solution is to remove the bad actors, not punish everyone else for thinking you weren't lying.
We all get to decide because we're responsible for our actions. I should always ask if I'm using or abusing a service and if it'll negatively impact others. Or I don't and I run the risk of running things into the ground and losing a good thing for everyone.
You brought up a professional videographer as and example. A professional should be using a commercial service that is set up for that. This was personal use storage which I would bet was not used for personal storage, instead it was used commercially.
Oh if only you had bothered even opening up the article. literally the second line: