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Personally, I'm done with these kind of mind hacks. While not quite in Facebook 'Your friends will miss you' territory, it still feels quite scummy. They belo

Personally, I'm done with these kind of mind hacks. While not quite in Facebook 'Your friends will miss you' territory, it still feels quite scummy. They belong to an era of the Internet where growth and retention stats trump all. Just let me cancel. Oh, and if you cancel and are over the limit and login, Dropbox will give you a nag screen and hold your files hostage till you cough up. How this is in any way an example of good practice is beyond me.

teknopaul 9y ago
Agreed, this is a horrible practice. I've a free account that's never getting upgraded now!
notyourwork 9y ago
What if you rent a 2000 sqft apartment and don’t renew your lease because of price. You decide to move to a smaller apartment with cheaper rent or move back in with your parents where rents free. Can you keep your stuff in the original apartment? I don’t disagree with you but your analogy is flawed. At least Dropbox keeps your stuff to reclaim whereas a landlord would kindly shuffle it to the garbage while cleaning your old apartment. That nag screen is a nice way of sayig we’re still paying for your hard drive space.
- clairity 9y ago
  “That nag screen is a nice way of sayig we’re still paying for your hard drive space.” i don’t remember what the nag screen says, but saying that they’re still paying for hard drive space for me would feel a bit more straightforward and genuine.
  - kristianc 9y ago
    It is also a sunk cost. Dropbox has already paid for your hard disk space - they run their own data centers. Okay, there is an opportunity cost, but unless Dropbox is running really close to capacity in its data centers, it is quite a small one.
- BigChiefSmokem 9y ago
  The fact that Dropbox DOESN'T throw the data away makes the point that they are taking your data hostage as leverage to get you to pay, and maybe even pay more over time. As for your own analogy, if you abandon your property during an eviction the landlord's only option would be to dump it as there is no incentive to take the property as a means to recoup losses. Dropbox should just do the same or provide some mechanism for permanent deletion on cancelation or else the data hostage stigma will remain. Edit: I also agree that this is one of the worse forms of dark patterns that subpar marketing teams force their engineers to implement.
bllguo 9y ago
You don't even need to be over the limit to be annoyed. Recently some of my free space expired and I came close to my storage cap (but not going over). Every day I get a notification on both of my computers that I'm close to exceeding it and that I should upgrade to a paid plan. It's incredibly irritating.

teknopaul 9y ago

Agreed, this is a horrible practice. I've a free account that's never getting upgraded now!

notyourwork 9y ago

What if you rent a 2000 sqft apartment and don’t renew your lease because of price. You decide to move to a smaller apartment with cheaper rent or move back in with your parents where rents free. Can you keep your stuff in the original apartment? I don’t disagree with you but your analogy is flawed. At least Dropbox keeps your stuff to reclaim whereas a landlord would kindly shuffle it to the garbage while cleaning your old apartment. That nag screen is a nice way of sayig we’re still paying for your hard drive space.

clairity 9y ago
“That nag screen is a nice way of sayig we’re still paying for your hard drive space.” i don’t remember what the nag screen says, but saying that they’re still paying for hard drive space for me would feel a bit more straightforward and genuine.
- kristianc 9y ago
  It is also a sunk cost. Dropbox has already paid for your hard disk space - they run their own data centers. Okay, there is an opportunity cost, but unless Dropbox is running really close to capacity in its data centers, it is quite a small one.
BigChiefSmokem 9y ago
The fact that Dropbox DOESN'T throw the data away makes the point that they are taking your data hostage as leverage to get you to pay, and maybe even pay more over time. As for your own analogy, if you abandon your property during an eviction the landlord's only option would be to dump it as there is no incentive to take the property as a means to recoup losses. Dropbox should just do the same or provide some mechanism for permanent deletion on cancelation or else the data hostage stigma will remain. Edit: I also agree that this is one of the worse forms of dark patterns that subpar marketing teams force their engineers to implement.

bllguo 9y ago

You don't even need to be over the limit to be annoyed. Recently some of my free space expired and I came close to my storage cap (but not going over). Every day I get a notification on both of my computers that I'm close to exceeding it and that I should upgrade to a paid plan. It's incredibly irritating.