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The first 1GB of storage is free. After that I’ll be charging users $5/100GB/month.

brudgers 6y ago
So $60/year. About the retail price of a 2TB external hard disk. Or a 256GB SD card. Or half a dozen 128GB thumb drives. That's the base case you're up against. It's what all photo hosting sites are up against. But in particular, none of those has a privacy issue. And for anyone who has been around, each is likely to be more reliable than a web based photo solution if history is a guide because the first order economics don't work in the long term. But history also indicates that anyplace that can store photos online is likely to be used for illegal images such as child pornography and copyright violations. To put it another way, technology is not the critical issue. Don't misunderstand me, it's cool that you built a system. And there are problems with Google photos. The reason there appears to be an opportunity is because the hard problems are really hard and non-obvious. Good luck.
- vishnumohandas 6y ago
  > anyplace that can store photos online is likely to be used for illegal images This is a valid point, and I'll have to figure out a way to craft my T&C such that I'm not held accountable for the decrypted data. As for the rest, as someone who is okay with paying for convenience and bells and whistles, while I understand your view point, it's hard for me to relate to it. I can only hope for there to be more like me. But I'm grateful to you for taking the time out to share your feedback. Thank you.
  - brudgers 6y ago
    The hosting issue is a matter of criminal law. Terms and conditions don’t matter in that space. They can’t transfer responsibility for breaking the law. So the unit economics have to cover the costs of dealing with the legal liability. And just for giggles, if you’re making money from hosting illegal content, law enforcement is more likely to pay attention and act with greater force. There’s no low hanging fruit at any kind of scale. If 0.01% of people are bad actors, it’s even money there’s one in the first 5000 accounts - but only if the account holders are randomly distributed among all people. But bad actors are motivated and the cost setting up a free account is asymmetric to the whackamole effort thwarting them. Again good luck.
    - vishnumohandas 6y ago
      Do you have any recommendations for how I could work around this? One thing I could do is to not offer free storage at all, but that would be unfair to the rest. Another option is to not enable encryption within the free storage tier and to depend on scripts to identify and block accounts uploading illegal content. But with these approaches I’d be discouraging only those actors who are unwilling to submit their card details. I took a look at Mega’s terms[1] and their stance is similar to what I earlier proposed. Also, they seem to be thriving by simply being responsive to takedown requests. Again, I’m curious to know if you think there are more elegant ways to handle this problem. Thanks! [1]: https://mega.nz/terms https://mega.nz/terms

So $60/year. About the retail price of a 2TB external hard disk. Or a 256GB SD card. Or half a dozen 128GB thumb drives. That's the base case you're up against. It's what all photo hosting sites are up against. But in particular, none of those has a privacy issue. And for anyone who has been around, each is likely to be more reliable than a web based photo solution if history is a guide because the first order economics don't work in the long term. But history also indicates that anyplace that can store photos online is likely to be used for illegal images such as child pornography and copyright violations. To put it another way, technology is not the critical issue. Don't misunderstand me, it's cool that you built a system. And there are problems with Google photos. The reason there appears to be an opportunity is because the hard problems are really hard and non-obvious. Good luck.

vishnumohandas 6y ago
> anyplace that can store photos online is likely to be used for illegal images This is a valid point, and I'll have to figure out a way to craft my T&C such that I'm not held accountable for the decrypted data. As for the rest, as someone who is okay with paying for convenience and bells and whistles, while I understand your view point, it's hard for me to relate to it. I can only hope for there to be more like me. But I'm grateful to you for taking the time out to share your feedback. Thank you.
- brudgers 6y ago
  The hosting issue is a matter of criminal law. Terms and conditions don’t matter in that space. They can’t transfer responsibility for breaking the law. So the unit economics have to cover the costs of dealing with the legal liability. And just for giggles, if you’re making money from hosting illegal content, law enforcement is more likely to pay attention and act with greater force. There’s no low hanging fruit at any kind of scale. If 0.01% of people are bad actors, it’s even money there’s one in the first 5000 accounts - but only if the account holders are randomly distributed among all people. But bad actors are motivated and the cost setting up a free account is asymmetric to the whackamole effort thwarting them. Again good luck.
  - vishnumohandas 6y ago
    Do you have any recommendations for how I could work around this? One thing I could do is to not offer free storage at all, but that would be unfair to the rest. Another option is to not enable encryption within the free storage tier and to depend on scripts to identify and block accounts uploading illegal content. But with these approaches I’d be discouraging only those actors who are unwilling to submit their card details. I took a look at Mega’s terms[1] and their stance is similar to what I earlier proposed. Also, they seem to be thriving by simply being responsive to takedown requests. Again, I’m curious to know if you think there are more elegant ways to handle this problem. Thanks! [1]: https://mega.nz/terms https://mega.nz/terms