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To those who say this makes sense because the free tier only allows public content: No it does not make sense. Paying for privacy is fair, but when you stop co

To those who say this makes sense because the free tier only allows public content: No it does not make sense. Paying for privacy is fair, but when you stop consuming a service and cancel your subscription/membership then all your private data cannot just be made public to everyone. It should get deleted. If you cancel your bank account you also don't expect your bank to publicly disclose all your bank statements from the last decade because you stopped using their service, or are you?

Angostura 6y ago
Except that you already agreed to this behaviour when you signed up. The wording needs to be changed to say: "Remember, if you cancel, your content will become public - delete any presentations you want don't want public before cancelling'. The tick box then becomes 'I understand - I have deleted any private content'.
- strawberrypuree 6y ago
  >Except that you already agreed to this behaviour when you signed up. This is victim blaming, and it legitimizes the heinous practice of putting onerous terms behind a click-through acceptance. Please stop.
  - rossjudson 6y ago
    Don't be ridiculous; this isn't victim-blaming. Consider reserving that term for when it's appropriate, rather than diluting it. It's simply making an argument...to which you can just change your response to read "The real problem is the heinous practice of putting..." And then I agree with you 100%. Or 99%, anyway.
    - nick_kline 6y ago
      Terms of service that hurt the end user are a bad idea, unacceptable, like dark patterns that cause people to opt in to things they don't want. It's not a crime, but it's immoral.
      - drstewart 6y ago
        https://www.gaiaplatform.io/terms https://www.gaiaplatform.io/terms >You understand and agree that WWW.GAIAPLATFORM.IO and any of its subsidiaries or affiliates shall in no event be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, or exemplary damages. Limiting your liability in the event I have DIRECT damages from using your product definitely hurts the end user. I don't want to opt into it... however: >If you do not want to be bound by our Terms your only option is not to visit, view or otherwise use the services of WWW.GAIAPLATFORM.IO Interesting. I assume you'll be correcting these immoral terms ASAP.
        nick_kline 6y ago
        I don't work at Gaia platform any more, I have no influence on them, but they should observe good behavior toward their customers like anyone.
- neurostimulant 6y ago
  What happen if my card expires or out of balance while on an extended vacation? I should just accept that my data became public when my account got downgraded automatically? Edit: looks like if your account expires, your data is still private, which is the right thing to do here. https://support.prezi.com/hc/en-us/articles/360003478894-Canceling-a-subscription https://support.prezi.com/hc/en-us/articles/360003478894-Can...
  - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
    > I should just accept that my data became public when my account got downgraded automatically? Based on those terms, yes. The terms are bung. But that's a separate matter.
- alisonkisk 6y ago
  Do you have evidence that users agreed to that behavior at signups?
  - hluska 6y ago
    Two things: 1.) I understand this is a rhetorical device but it is disingenuous to ask someone to provide evidence of what another individual knew and when. 2.) Their terms are public. Your comment would have been more usefully informed had you bothered to read them.
    - mynameisvlad 6y ago
      Their current terms are public. Those could have changed wildly over the 11 years the company has been active.
    - speedgoose 6y ago
      Nobody bother reading terms that look like this : https://prezi.com/prezi-business-terms-of-use/ https://prezi.com/prezi-business-terms-of-use/
      - Joker_vD 6y ago
        "I've read and agreed to terms and conditions" is probably the most common lie in the Internet.
      - gav 6y ago
        Estimated reading time: 22 minutes, 45 seconds. Contains 4552 words Plus it's a poor use of half an hour if they can change things anyway: > Prezi may revise these Prezi Business Terms and Conditions. If Prezi makes material revisions, Prezi will notify Customer, either through the user interface of the Presentation Services, in an email notification or through other reasonable means. Customer’s use of the Presentation Services after the date such revisions become effective will constitute consent to the revised Prezi Business Terms and Conditions.
      - btilly 6y ago
- quotha 6y ago
  Ok, Willy Wonka
- usrusr 6y ago
  That would indeed become agreeable (even if still not super-nice) if they changed the cancellation form to a two-option choice between "delete all private" and "publish all private".
  - mnw21cam 6y ago
    A third (perhaps more sensible) option would be for all private presentations to be retained, but presenting and editing them is disabled. Downloading them can also be retained. If the subscription is renewed, then they can easily switch back on the ability to present and edit the private presentations.
- onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
  This is why we need regulations.
  - fisf 6y ago
    This is basically screaming for a GDPR lawsuits as it is.
    - Fnoord 6y ago
      They are based in Budapest / San Francisco. Budapest lies in Hungary, so if they don't block entire EU the GDPR applies. Its possible they block entire EU (I did not verify) but it would be weird given they are partly based within EU.
      - M2Ys4U 6y ago
        If they're based in the EU then the GDPR applies no matter where their customers are. They can block people in the EU all they want, it won't make a difference.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  I know what you're saying, but it's bad design regardless. There is no use-case where deleting an account should leave the content around. What's the point with messing around with checkboxes - they deleted their account, so delete their content along with it.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  But it just seems irresponsible to build a system where private data can automatically become public like this, whether or not your users know about it.
- sp332 6y ago
  Except that you already agreed to this behaviour when you signed up. You're guessing, and I think you're making too strong a statement about something you only guessed at. I looked through https://prezi.com/terms-of-use/201910_NL/ https://prezi.com/terms-of-use/201910_NL/ ("Effective September 1, 2020") and didn't see anything about this.
  - _Nat_ 6y ago
    I also didn't see this in the Terms of Service. Where are people reading this? If someone stops paying for private data hosting, then I'd expect them to lose private data hosting -- in full. I don't see how the "private" in "private data hosting" could be seen as severable without explicit agreement to such a provision. By analogy, it'd be like if someone requested a plumber come by to their house to replace their toilet. Then when cancelling the request, the plumber said, okay, we can cancel, but the customer must accept the free version of this service: they'll come by and take the old toilet away -- because this is a free service, cancelling the paid version merely cancels them putting in the new toilet, but they still get the old one. It seems to me that a customer who cancels something shouldn't be forced to accept a substitute service. It'd seem reasonable for the service-provider to ask if the customer wanted the substitute, but language implying that the customer must accept it seems wrong. But, is that what's happening here?
    - zaphar 6y ago
      There are two possible ways to lose private data hosting. 1. Your data is deleted and no longer hosted. 2. Your data is still hosted and made public. The first one is what I would expect to happen since it makes the most sense in the context of the service. The second one just makes you look like a jerk.
      - _Nat_ 6y ago
        Seems more than merely jerkish to me. I mean, say you were in the situation with a plumber who did offer a free service of taking away people's toilets (which seems plausible -- some people might appreciate getting rid of their old toilet for free, while a plumber might offer the service in order to resell the old toilets). And then you paid for a plumber to replace yours, and they insisted that while you cancel the replacement, they were still going to take away your old one. Would you accept this, holding that it's a legal (if jerkish) way to have the toilet replacement canceled?
- mdoms 6y ago
  > Except that you already agreed to this behaviour when you signed up. No, you didn't. You may have ticked a box that said you read the terms of service, but as we all know, no one is reading those documents. It's just plainly dishonest to drop something so unexpected into a ToS.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    Regardless of the understanding when ticking the box, the courts (in the US) have upheld shrink wrap contracts and rejected the “I didn’t actually read the TOS, so I can’t be bound by them” argument.[a] Basically, you’re SOL. [a]: The reason being: you checked a box acknowledging that you read them so you can’t claim you didn’t because then someone could read them, then claim they didn’t. It’s a terrible abuse of contract law, but it is unfortunately the world we live in if the legislature won’t fix it.
    - jkaplowitz 6y ago
      For consumer contracts, many European courts take exactly the opposite tack, refusing to enforce surprising provisions against the consumer.
      - colejohnson66 6y ago
        Isn’t that because there are regulations that say those provisions aren’t allowed (whether directly or indirectly)? The US doesn’t really have such laws.
        Cederfjard 6y ago
        Surely you can’t stipulate just anything in a contract and have that upheld as binding by a court, even in the US?
        nobody9999 6y ago
        >Surely you can’t stipulate just anything in a contract and have that upheld as binding by a court, even in the US? That's a great question. I'd expect that courts would not uphold claims to one's first-born child[0][1], but only because that sort of thing is already illegal (human trafficking). As for stuff that isn't illegal, I expect that YMMV. That said, people actually "agreed" to give up/assign their first-born children with these "Click-wrap" agreements. That people are so cavalier about such things should be a huge red flag for regulators to require not just a link to such terms, but that both parties should be required to demonstrate their specific understanding of terms and conditions before such a contract can be considered enforceable. But that's not how US courts have interpreted this sort of thing. So, as always, Caveat Emptor! [0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/29/londoners-wi-fi-security-herod-clause https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/29/londoners... [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/07/nobody-reads-tos-agreements-even-ones-that-demand-first-born-as-payment/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/07/nobody-reads-tos... Edit: Fixed spacing.
- wtetzner 6y ago
  Even if that's true (it's not clear to me that the TOS include anything about this when you sign up), I would argue it's still unethical, even if it ends up being legal.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  >Except that you already agreed to this behaviour when you signed up. It may come as a surprise but not everything written in a contract is in fact enforceable. I can demand that I get your firstborn when you cancel your subscription, doesn't mean that's going to happen. GDPR gives you the rights to delete your personal data regardless of you having a subscription so I'm pretty sure this is a lawsuit waiting to happen.
  - lotu 6y ago
    You would still be able to delete any of your information if you don’t want it to become public GDPR does not apply here.
    - Barrin92 6y ago
      From the wording in the TOS it sounds like this is only possible before cancelling your subscription. There is no such requirement in the GDPR. At any point, do you as a data subject have the right to have your information erased, or stop a service provider from processing your data.
  - mytailorisrich 6y ago
    It should be noted that the data in question here may be personal in the sense that they belong to the user but not in the sense of the GDPR. Whether the GDPR apply to data stored on that service can only be judged on a case by case basis after having looked at the data in question. In any case, I'm not sure that they prevent their customers from deleting data. It seems that that content is public unless deleted if a customer cancels their paid subscription.
- mumblemumble 6y ago
  > Except that you already agreed to this behaviour when you signed up. I miss the days when burying awful things that nobody would willingly accept in the fine print (which few people read and most people have a hard time understanding) was something we all understood to be immoral, to the point that it was a cartoon trope as something the Devil would do.
  - vanattab 6y ago
    I recently had my phone fixed at a uBreakiFix location and at and on the bottom of the credit card receipt it has a contract written at the bottom that among other things says your waving privacy rights, property rights to your old parts, swear you have read some link to a TOS. When checking out they never mentioned any of that when signing the receipt (with the exception of the not returning the parts when I told them I would like them back). In my option any contractual language should have to me signed for separately then a CC receipt. EDIT: with that said they did a great job fixing my phone with an hour or two.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
      I suspect that that is straight-up illegal in two different directions: it is unlikely that the credit card company would be pleased to find out that these folks are trying to use a credit card signature for something else, and I'm pretty sure any lawyer could get such a contract thrown out with exactly zero effort, if it truly is framed as just being the receipt that you use to pay (a contract has to be intentionally signed by person who intended to agree to it in order to count for anything) (IANAL, could be wrong)
      - lisper 6y ago
        IANAL either, but you are not wrong. I know about this because I was involved in a lawsuit that involved contract law. In order for a contract to be valid it is not enough to have a document with a valid signature on it. There has to be an actual "meeting of the minds". Both parties have to actually intend to abide by the terms of the contract at the time it was signed, which logically implies that both parties have to know the contract's actual content. The real underlying strategy here is to leverage people's general ignorance of contract law in order to intimidate them into thinking that they are contractually bound when in fact they are not, at least not legally. As a practical matter, the need to pay a lawyer often trumps the actual law (another lesson I learned the hard way).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- lilyball 6y ago
  No this is still terrible. The bare minimum here must be 'If you cancel, all of your private presentations will be deleted.' with a tick box that says 'I understand - delete my private data'. I should not have to go do a bunch of extra legwork to ensure my private data doesn't become public when I cancel my subscription, and in particular, non-consensual cancellations (e.g. cancellation due to non-payment) must not make my private data public.
- segmondy 6y ago
  No, the tick box should be a radio button (*) delete all data, () make data public.
- lliamander 6y ago
  Companies do not have carte blanche to write whatever they want in their EULA and expect that it is legally enforceable. Often they will put in things that they know aren't enforceable because they hope people won't try to challenge it in court. There are contract laws, consumer protection laws, etc. that still must be adhered to.
  - nobody9999 6y ago
    >Often they will put in things that they know aren't enforceable because they hope people won't try to challenge it in court. There are contract laws, consumer protection laws, etc. that still must be adhered to. Which is why a "severability clause"[0] is pretty ubiquitous in contracts. N.B.: IANAL [0] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/severability.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/severability.asp
- hnick 6y ago
  For their faults I do like how Mailchimp forces you to type DELETE into a text box rather than just click a button, for high risk activities. It cuts through those habits we have formed. On topic, I think a friendlier approach would be to automatically delist or unpublish anything flagged private. The user can then go and update as needed.
- himinlomax 6y ago
  > Except that you already agreed to this behaviour when you signed up. I don't know about you, but I never agree to anything when I sign up to anything, because I never read anything before I sign up, just like everyone else (except people paid to do so.)
- raxxorrax 6y ago
  Then allow them to have a button to delete all content with a click at that point. Otherwise it is just inhibiting personal data management.
alanfranz 6y ago
I think that a "better" way to do it would be a choice: a) delete all your private content; b) make all your content public. But the tweet is tendentious. Nothing prevents the user from deleting their content - THAT would be the problematic part. So it's a small nuisance for the user, but they ARE telling the user. They don't make your content silently public and then say "you agreed to that in paragraph 7.9.12 when you registered."
- Closi 6y ago
  Or better yet, your old presentations stay on the same terms, but any new presentations are public. (This is similar to how LucidChart works)
  - alanfranz 6y ago
    I was talking about a better UX choice. You're talking about changing their free tier pricing. Their free tier pricing is 100% legit, why would you expect more free beer than was granted to you?!?
    - Closi 6y ago
      I'm not talking about changing their free tier pricing - I'm talking about changing their functionality in a very limited way for ex-premium members.
      - alanfranz 6y ago
        There's no ex-premium. There are paid plans, and the basic free tier. You're talking about changing their free tier pricing. https://prezi.com/pricing/basic/ https://prezi.com/pricing/basic/ The basic free tier for Prezi is "you can use our platform but your presentations are public". Once you're not on a paid plan, there are only two choices: you can delete your presentations or make it public. When you are on a paid plan it IS possible to download your presentations to your computer. There's nothing that entitles you to "my saved presentations are mine forever in Prezi and they stay private even though I don't pay.". Nothing.
PopeDotNinja 6y ago
It’d be funny (and awful) to see a television show where the contents of a private repo are auctioned off when the subscriber stops paying.
- therealmocker 6y ago
  Not sure if reference to Storage Wars or not.
- tgtweak 6y ago
  Happens all the time in datacenters when clients don't pay their hosting.
  - bonestamp2 6y ago
    How does one bid on these data lots?
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  I'm trying to remember who waas called in to do data recovery on a VAX that turned up in a Sauusolito garage back in the 1990s. I want to say Clifford Stoll, though I'm unsure and cant find an online reference.

Angostura 6y ago

Except that you already agreed to this behaviour when you signed up. The wording needs to be changed to say: "Remember, if you cancel, your content will become public - delete any presentations you want don't want public before cancelling'. The tick box then becomes 'I understand - I have deleted any private content'.

strawberrypuree 6y ago
>Except that you already agreed to this behaviour when you signed up. This is victim blaming, and it legitimizes the heinous practice of putting onerous terms behind a click-through acceptance. Please stop.
- rossjudson 6y ago
  Don't be ridiculous; this isn't victim-blaming. Consider reserving that term for when it's appropriate, rather than diluting it. It's simply making an argument...to which you can just change your response to read "The real problem is the heinous practice of putting..." And then I agree with you 100%. Or 99%, anyway.
  - nick_kline 6y ago
    Terms of service that hurt the end user are a bad idea, unacceptable, like dark patterns that cause people to opt in to things they don't want. It's not a crime, but it's immoral.
    - drstewart 6y ago
      https://www.gaiaplatform.io/terms https://www.gaiaplatform.io/terms >You understand and agree that WWW.GAIAPLATFORM.IO and any of its subsidiaries or affiliates shall in no event be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, or exemplary damages. Limiting your liability in the event I have DIRECT damages from using your product definitely hurts the end user. I don't want to opt into it... however: >If you do not want to be bound by our Terms your only option is not to visit, view or otherwise use the services of WWW.GAIAPLATFORM.IO Interesting. I assume you'll be correcting these immoral terms ASAP.
      - nick_kline 6y ago
        I don't work at Gaia platform any more, I have no influence on them, but they should observe good behavior toward their customers like anyone.
neurostimulant 6y ago
What happen if my card expires or out of balance while on an extended vacation? I should just accept that my data became public when my account got downgraded automatically? Edit: looks like if your account expires, your data is still private, which is the right thing to do here. https://support.prezi.com/hc/en-us/articles/360003478894-Canceling-a-subscription https://support.prezi.com/hc/en-us/articles/360003478894-Can...
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > I should just accept that my data became public when my account got downgraded automatically? Based on those terms, yes. The terms are bung. But that's a separate matter.
alisonkisk 6y ago
Do you have evidence that users agreed to that behavior at signups?
- hluska 6y ago
  Two things: 1.) I understand this is a rhetorical device but it is disingenuous to ask someone to provide evidence of what another individual knew and when. 2.) Their terms are public. Your comment would have been more usefully informed had you bothered to read them.
  - mynameisvlad 6y ago
    Their current terms are public. Those could have changed wildly over the 11 years the company has been active.
  - speedgoose 6y ago
    Nobody bother reading terms that look like this : https://prezi.com/prezi-business-terms-of-use/ https://prezi.com/prezi-business-terms-of-use/
    - Joker_vD 6y ago
      "I've read and agreed to terms and conditions" is probably the most common lie in the Internet.
    - gav 6y ago
      Estimated reading time: 22 minutes, 45 seconds. Contains 4552 words Plus it's a poor use of half an hour if they can change things anyway: > Prezi may revise these Prezi Business Terms and Conditions. If Prezi makes material revisions, Prezi will notify Customer, either through the user interface of the Presentation Services, in an email notification or through other reasonable means. Customer’s use of the Presentation Services after the date such revisions become effective will constitute consent to the revised Prezi Business Terms and Conditions.
    - btilly 6y ago
quotha 6y ago
Ok, Willy Wonka
usrusr 6y ago
That would indeed become agreeable (even if still not super-nice) if they changed the cancellation form to a two-option choice between "delete all private" and "publish all private".
- mnw21cam 6y ago
  A third (perhaps more sensible) option would be for all private presentations to be retained, but presenting and editing them is disabled. Downloading them can also be retained. If the subscription is renewed, then they can easily switch back on the ability to present and edit the private presentations.
onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
This is why we need regulations.
- fisf 6y ago
  This is basically screaming for a GDPR lawsuits as it is.
  - Fnoord 6y ago
    They are based in Budapest / San Francisco. Budapest lies in Hungary, so if they don't block entire EU the GDPR applies. Its possible they block entire EU (I did not verify) but it would be weird given they are partly based within EU.
    - M2Ys4U 6y ago
      If they're based in the EU then the GDPR applies no matter where their customers are. They can block people in the EU all they want, it won't make a difference.
macspoofing 6y ago
I know what you're saying, but it's bad design regardless. There is no use-case where deleting an account should leave the content around. What's the point with messing around with checkboxes - they deleted their account, so delete their content along with it.
SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
But it just seems irresponsible to build a system where private data can automatically become public like this, whether or not your users know about it.
sp332 6y ago
Except that you already agreed to this behaviour when you signed up. You're guessing, and I think you're making too strong a statement about something you only guessed at. I looked through https://prezi.com/terms-of-use/201910_NL/ https://prezi.com/terms-of-use/201910_NL/ ("Effective September 1, 2020") and didn't see anything about this.
- _Nat_ 6y ago
  I also didn't see this in the Terms of Service. Where are people reading this? If someone stops paying for private data hosting, then I'd expect them to lose private data hosting -- in full. I don't see how the "private" in "private data hosting" could be seen as severable without explicit agreement to such a provision. By analogy, it'd be like if someone requested a plumber come by to their house to replace their toilet. Then when cancelling the request, the plumber said, okay, we can cancel, but the customer must accept the free version of this service: they'll come by and take the old toilet away -- because this is a free service, cancelling the paid version merely cancels them putting in the new toilet, but they still get the old one. It seems to me that a customer who cancels something shouldn't be forced to accept a substitute service. It'd seem reasonable for the service-provider to ask if the customer wanted the substitute, but language implying that the customer must accept it seems wrong. But, is that what's happening here?
  - zaphar 6y ago
    There are two possible ways to lose private data hosting. 1. Your data is deleted and no longer hosted. 2. Your data is still hosted and made public. The first one is what I would expect to happen since it makes the most sense in the context of the service. The second one just makes you look like a jerk.
    - _Nat_ 6y ago
      Seems more than merely jerkish to me. I mean, say you were in the situation with a plumber who did offer a free service of taking away people's toilets (which seems plausible -- some people might appreciate getting rid of their old toilet for free, while a plumber might offer the service in order to resell the old toilets). And then you paid for a plumber to replace yours, and they insisted that while you cancel the replacement, they were still going to take away your old one. Would you accept this, holding that it's a legal (if jerkish) way to have the toilet replacement canceled?
mdoms 6y ago
> Except that you already agreed to this behaviour when you signed up. No, you didn't. You may have ticked a box that said you read the terms of service, but as we all know, no one is reading those documents. It's just plainly dishonest to drop something so unexpected into a ToS.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  Regardless of the understanding when ticking the box, the courts (in the US) have upheld shrink wrap contracts and rejected the “I didn’t actually read the TOS, so I can’t be bound by them” argument.[a] Basically, you’re SOL. [a]: The reason being: you checked a box acknowledging that you read them so you can’t claim you didn’t because then someone could read them, then claim they didn’t. It’s a terrible abuse of contract law, but it is unfortunately the world we live in if the legislature won’t fix it.
  - jkaplowitz 6y ago
    For consumer contracts, many European courts take exactly the opposite tack, refusing to enforce surprising provisions against the consumer.
    - colejohnson66 6y ago
      Isn’t that because there are regulations that say those provisions aren’t allowed (whether directly or indirectly)? The US doesn’t really have such laws.
      - Cederfjard 6y ago
        Surely you can’t stipulate just anything in a contract and have that upheld as binding by a court, even in the US?
        nobody9999 6y ago
        >Surely you can’t stipulate just anything in a contract and have that upheld as binding by a court, even in the US? That's a great question. I'd expect that courts would not uphold claims to one's first-born child[0][1], but only because that sort of thing is already illegal (human trafficking). As for stuff that isn't illegal, I expect that YMMV. That said, people actually "agreed" to give up/assign their first-born children with these "Click-wrap" agreements. That people are so cavalier about such things should be a huge red flag for regulators to require not just a link to such terms, but that both parties should be required to demonstrate their specific understanding of terms and conditions before such a contract can be considered enforceable. But that's not how US courts have interpreted this sort of thing. So, as always, Caveat Emptor! [0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/29/londoners-wi-fi-security-herod-clause https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/29/londoners... [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/07/nobody-reads-tos-agreements-even-ones-that-demand-first-born-as-payment/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/07/nobody-reads-tos... Edit: Fixed spacing.
wtetzner 6y ago
Even if that's true (it's not clear to me that the TOS include anything about this when you sign up), I would argue it's still unethical, even if it ends up being legal.
Barrin92 6y ago
>Except that you already agreed to this behaviour when you signed up. It may come as a surprise but not everything written in a contract is in fact enforceable. I can demand that I get your firstborn when you cancel your subscription, doesn't mean that's going to happen. GDPR gives you the rights to delete your personal data regardless of you having a subscription so I'm pretty sure this is a lawsuit waiting to happen.
- lotu 6y ago
  You would still be able to delete any of your information if you don’t want it to become public GDPR does not apply here.
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    From the wording in the TOS it sounds like this is only possible before cancelling your subscription. There is no such requirement in the GDPR. At any point, do you as a data subject have the right to have your information erased, or stop a service provider from processing your data.
- mytailorisrich 6y ago
  It should be noted that the data in question here may be personal in the sense that they belong to the user but not in the sense of the GDPR. Whether the GDPR apply to data stored on that service can only be judged on a case by case basis after having looked at the data in question. In any case, I'm not sure that they prevent their customers from deleting data. It seems that that content is public unless deleted if a customer cancels their paid subscription.
mumblemumble 6y ago
> Except that you already agreed to this behaviour when you signed up. I miss the days when burying awful things that nobody would willingly accept in the fine print (which few people read and most people have a hard time understanding) was something we all understood to be immoral, to the point that it was a cartoon trope as something the Devil would do.
- vanattab 6y ago
  I recently had my phone fixed at a uBreakiFix location and at and on the bottom of the credit card receipt it has a contract written at the bottom that among other things says your waving privacy rights, property rights to your old parts, swear you have read some link to a TOS. When checking out they never mentioned any of that when signing the receipt (with the exception of the not returning the parts when I told them I would like them back). In my option any contractual language should have to me signed for separately then a CC receipt. EDIT: with that said they did a great job fixing my phone with an hour or two.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
    I suspect that that is straight-up illegal in two different directions: it is unlikely that the credit card company would be pleased to find out that these folks are trying to use a credit card signature for something else, and I'm pretty sure any lawyer could get such a contract thrown out with exactly zero effort, if it truly is framed as just being the receipt that you use to pay (a contract has to be intentionally signed by person who intended to agree to it in order to count for anything) (IANAL, could be wrong)
    - lisper 6y ago
      IANAL either, but you are not wrong. I know about this because I was involved in a lawsuit that involved contract law. In order for a contract to be valid it is not enough to have a document with a valid signature on it. There has to be an actual "meeting of the minds". Both parties have to actually intend to abide by the terms of the contract at the time it was signed, which logically implies that both parties have to know the contract's actual content. The real underlying strategy here is to leverage people's general ignorance of contract law in order to intimidate them into thinking that they are contractually bound when in fact they are not, at least not legally. As a practical matter, the need to pay a lawyer often trumps the actual law (another lesson I learned the hard way).
deleted 6y ago
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lilyball 6y ago
No this is still terrible. The bare minimum here must be 'If you cancel, all of your private presentations will be deleted.' with a tick box that says 'I understand - delete my private data'. I should not have to go do a bunch of extra legwork to ensure my private data doesn't become public when I cancel my subscription, and in particular, non-consensual cancellations (e.g. cancellation due to non-payment) must not make my private data public.
segmondy 6y ago
No, the tick box should be a radio button (*) delete all data, () make data public.
lliamander 6y ago
Companies do not have carte blanche to write whatever they want in their EULA and expect that it is legally enforceable. Often they will put in things that they know aren't enforceable because they hope people won't try to challenge it in court. There are contract laws, consumer protection laws, etc. that still must be adhered to.
- nobody9999 6y ago
  >Often they will put in things that they know aren't enforceable because they hope people won't try to challenge it in court. There are contract laws, consumer protection laws, etc. that still must be adhered to. Which is why a "severability clause"[0] is pretty ubiquitous in contracts. N.B.: IANAL [0] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/severability.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/severability.asp
hnick 6y ago
For their faults I do like how Mailchimp forces you to type DELETE into a text box rather than just click a button, for high risk activities. It cuts through those habits we have formed. On topic, I think a friendlier approach would be to automatically delist or unpublish anything flagged private. The user can then go and update as needed.
himinlomax 6y ago
> Except that you already agreed to this behaviour when you signed up. I don't know about you, but I never agree to anything when I sign up to anything, because I never read anything before I sign up, just like everyone else (except people paid to do so.)
raxxorrax 6y ago
Then allow them to have a button to delete all content with a click at that point. Otherwise it is just inhibiting personal data management.

alanfranz 6y ago

I think that a "better" way to do it would be a choice: a) delete all your private content; b) make all your content public. But the tweet is tendentious. Nothing prevents the user from deleting their content - THAT would be the problematic part. So it's a small nuisance for the user, but they ARE telling the user. They don't make your content silently public and then say "you agreed to that in paragraph 7.9.12 when you registered."

Closi 6y ago
Or better yet, your old presentations stay on the same terms, but any new presentations are public. (This is similar to how LucidChart works)
- alanfranz 6y ago
  I was talking about a better UX choice. You're talking about changing their free tier pricing. Their free tier pricing is 100% legit, why would you expect more free beer than was granted to you?!?
  - Closi 6y ago
    I'm not talking about changing their free tier pricing - I'm talking about changing their functionality in a very limited way for ex-premium members.
    - alanfranz 6y ago
      There's no ex-premium. There are paid plans, and the basic free tier. You're talking about changing their free tier pricing. https://prezi.com/pricing/basic/ https://prezi.com/pricing/basic/ The basic free tier for Prezi is "you can use our platform but your presentations are public". Once you're not on a paid plan, there are only two choices: you can delete your presentations or make it public. When you are on a paid plan it IS possible to download your presentations to your computer. There's nothing that entitles you to "my saved presentations are mine forever in Prezi and they stay private even though I don't pay.". Nothing.

PopeDotNinja 6y ago

It’d be funny (and awful) to see a television show where the contents of a private repo are auctioned off when the subscriber stops paying.

therealmocker 6y ago
Not sure if reference to Storage Wars or not.
tgtweak 6y ago
Happens all the time in datacenters when clients don't pay their hosting.
- bonestamp2 6y ago
  How does one bid on these data lots?
dredmorbius 6y ago
I'm trying to remember who waas called in to do data recovery on a VAX that turned up in a Sauusolito garage back in the 1990s. I want to say Clifford Stoll, though I'm unsure and cant find an online reference.