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Dropbox removed ability to opt your files out of AI training (news.ycombinator.com)

submitted 11 months ago by L4s to c/technology

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Dropbox removed ability to opt your files out of AI training::undefined

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 11 months ago (4 children)

I HATE Dropbox.

I tried to use them recently and their service had some problems.

They have an option to "stream" files when you need them. The only problem is you need an internet connection to access them. I did not trust this kind of system and I actually need to access my files even without internet.

So there is a way to make the files available offline. Great! Problem solves. NOPE! They offer an option to have your files available offline, but they might remove the files and make them only available in the cloud if you local storage gets low.

That is really all they say about it and there is no option to turn this off. I was uncomfortable about their vagueness and my inability to disable this.

Within 24 hours of paying for their service I learned of this and they refused to refund my purchase.

PLEASE NEVER WORK WITH DROPBOX

[–] rolling_resistance 5 points 11 months ago

I've had a great experience with Dropbox (for about 10 years!), but I also used their Linux client which is old and very straightforward. Now I'm a Nextcloud user, and I wish it worked as well as Dropbox did. But with this AI thing I'm not switching back.

[–] andxz 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I've used Dropbox since literally their first year of creation and I've never experienced a single one of these issues. I use it mostly as a portable library and all I need is 2 mins of any internet connection to download any book(s) I want to read to a local device. Mind you this is on their free plan, so I've never paid a cent to them either. Requires me to periodically transfer older books to another long term solution, but that is just a few mouse clicks. I've read hundreds if not more ebooks this way. Since I prefer .mobi (which I can even read IN dropbox if I want) I can upload straight to dropbox after converting from .epub.

I mean, it sounds frustrating, but your experience with them sounds extremely weird to me.

At least to me they've been the best cloud provider by far, for what it's worth.

With that said, I don't especially like that they're doing this even though my specific content is mostly available in any number of places anyway, given that it's literature.

[–] nutsack 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

it was painful to migrate from dropbox. their api is shit and does nothing to guarantee delivery. i had to split folders into 5gb chunks and download everything in zip files through the browser. it took a year. what an awful company.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Why not use something like rclone to download your stuff?

[–] nutsack 2 points 11 months ago

I tried several third-party tools and all of them had the same problems with the API

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I’ll never work with them again and actively. Advocate against them.