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I've long suspected that r/DataHoarder is why we can't have nice things, i.e. cheap online data storage that is slightly subsidized by the average user who only

by oefrha 6y ago

I've long suspected that r/DataHoarder is why we can't have nice things, i.e. cheap online data storage that is slightly subsidized by the average user who only stores a little. Thanks for confirming from the point of view of a major storage provider.

vmception 6y ago
When stock brokers were charging commissions this was their model too. They would take the user profile of most of the users that gravitated to their specific sales pitch, and make a commission structure that worked for them and let that subsidize the outliers that traded different products like high volumes of sub-penny stocks. (There are some fixed costs to stock and options trading, which are now subsidized by selling data instead of charging commissions)
bayindirh 6y ago
I follow r/Datahoarder for best practices and methods for getting my own stuff (like HumbleBundle or purchased eBook libraries) to my own local storage but, some of them really abuse online storage providers. I cringe sometimes reading all the posts. Why on the world someone try to mirror nearly everything to somewhere like Scrat from the Ice Age?
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  It’s mainly because they can, but I also bet it’s that feeling that you’re “cheating” the system (like why people cheat in online video games)
- lgvld 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsive_hoarding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsive_hoarding
  - bayindirh 6y ago
    Some people even hunt for "Unlimited for life" early adopter plans and grab them, then abuse them. One of the backup services imposed a 12TB limit. Evernote reverted their unlimited data storage pledge, Google retired unlimited data in GSuite. I cannot say all of them due to hoarders but, Evernote CEO openly said that "People tried to zip and upload their backups to our servers. We're not that big".
    - fuzxi 6y ago
      >Google retired unlimited data in GSuite They actually did not. The $12/user/month plan with an unenforced data limit was rebranded as the $20/month Enterprise Standard plan with unlimited storage explicitly allowed. Existing users are currently grandfathered in at the $12 price but may be forced to "upgrade" at some point in the future.
      - Dylan16807 6y ago
        "Customers that have 5 or more End Users will receive a total amount of Google Drive storage equal to 5TB times the number of End Users, with more storage available at Google's discretion upon reasonable request to Google." is not very comforting language.
        fuzxi 6y ago
        I think you're looking at the Business plan. Enterprise is separate. You can't get an Enterprise plan without contacting Sales unless you're grandfathered in.
        Dylan16807 6y ago
        https://workspace.google.com/terms/user_features.html https://workspace.google.com/terms/user_features.html I'm looking at Enterprise. > You can't get an Enterprise plan without contacting Sales unless you're grandfathered in. Having to contact sales and prove myself is not exactly the same as being retired, but it's pretty similar in a lot of ways.
- djeiasbsbo 6y ago
  I understand and while we all understand that it isn't technically "unlimited", they still are just using the service they pay for in the way it was advertised to them. If it isn't unlimited and you don't want to deal with that 0.1% of users, do not advertise it that way. Again, I think it's ridiculous to use online storage services in that way but still, is it really fair to blame the consumer here?
- skylanh 6y ago
  I use some of the techniques as offsite "well, maybe it's with that cloud storage?" disaster recovery backup options. I have used Backblaze, and was storing 16TB there, and that was $50/month. I did a simple envelope calculation, decided I could either hand-roll a offsite system with 2x consumer harddrives, or look for other options. I have 28TB backed up with another provider now. Why haven't I tried either AWS or Azure cold-tier storage? I have maybe 2 hours a month where I can spend looking into solutions to my offsite backup situation, and I am somewhat concerned that I could mess up the AWS solution and cost myself thousands of dollars. This coupled with a lack of time, significant competing concerns (keeping a job during a global pandemic job market; work-load; personal life), and "eh, I'll get to it"-laziness, means I have to put this on the back burner. If you handed me a simple solution using rclone, zfs send, btrfs-send, or a pre-canned "this is what it would cost" Bacula approach, I would move to it.
lou1306 6y ago
> r/DataHoarder To be honest, 99% of the posts there are about building your own NAS. And I don't fully agree with the "we can't have nice things" narrative in the Google Photos case. How bad was Google hurt by the actions of these few "power users"? Before that, how much did they profit by driving out competition with their "unlimited" plan? (Which, by the way, was neatly integrated and advertised into their own mobile OS...)
- bostonsre 6y ago
  The uber strategy (speaking of ponzi scheme...).
- bluedino 6y ago
  99% of the users of unlimited plans are only storing a smalll amount of data
- dodobirdlord 6y ago
  I don't really get the gnashing of teeth about Google withdrawing the "Unlimited". Google never promised anyone "Unlimited" anything, the details of the contract always said "we reserve the right to modify this in the future". People who aren't data hoarders, who contracted with Google in the spirit of the contract ("more storage than you will need"), are still getting what they signed up for. People who contracted with Google not in the spirit of the contract ("Haha, unlimited, huh?") are also getting exactly what they signed up for - the letter, rather than the spirit of the contract. Google is keeping the spirit of the contract with people who took them up on the spirit of the contract, and Google is keeping the letter of the contract with people who took them up on the letter of the contract. I cannot see any fault in this.
dawnerd 6y ago
I don’t think it’s them, I think it’s the people at r/plex that are using google drive as their data store and people bragging about having 100s of tbs of content.
- woleium 6y ago
  I doubt that is so much of an issue as most of the content will be deduplicated across users.
  - fuzxi 6y ago
    Standard practice is to encrypt media stored on cloud storage to avoid DMCA fuckery.

by oefrha 6y ago

vmception 6y ago

When stock brokers were charging commissions this was their model too. They would take the user profile of most of the users that gravitated to their specific sales pitch, and make a commission structure that worked for them and let that subsidize the outliers that traded different products like high volumes of sub-penny stocks. (There are some fixed costs to stock and options trading, which are now subsidized by selling data instead of charging commissions)

bayindirh 6y ago

I follow r/Datahoarder for best practices and methods for getting my own stuff (like HumbleBundle or purchased eBook libraries) to my own local storage but, some of them really abuse online storage providers. I cringe sometimes reading all the posts. Why on the world someone try to mirror nearly everything to somewhere like Scrat from the Ice Age?

colejohnson66 6y ago
It’s mainly because they can, but I also bet it’s that feeling that you’re “cheating” the system (like why people cheat in online video games)
lgvld 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsive_hoarding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsive_hoarding
- bayindirh 6y ago
  Some people even hunt for "Unlimited for life" early adopter plans and grab them, then abuse them. One of the backup services imposed a 12TB limit. Evernote reverted their unlimited data storage pledge, Google retired unlimited data in GSuite. I cannot say all of them due to hoarders but, Evernote CEO openly said that "People tried to zip and upload their backups to our servers. We're not that big".
  - fuzxi 6y ago
    >Google retired unlimited data in GSuite They actually did not. The $12/user/month plan with an unenforced data limit was rebranded as the $20/month Enterprise Standard plan with unlimited storage explicitly allowed. Existing users are currently grandfathered in at the $12 price but may be forced to "upgrade" at some point in the future.
    - Dylan16807 6y ago
      "Customers that have 5 or more End Users will receive a total amount of Google Drive storage equal to 5TB times the number of End Users, with more storage available at Google's discretion upon reasonable request to Google." is not very comforting language.
      - fuzxi 6y ago
        I think you're looking at the Business plan. Enterprise is separate. You can't get an Enterprise plan without contacting Sales unless you're grandfathered in.
        Dylan16807 6y ago
        https://workspace.google.com/terms/user_features.html https://workspace.google.com/terms/user_features.html I'm looking at Enterprise. > You can't get an Enterprise plan without contacting Sales unless you're grandfathered in. Having to contact sales and prove myself is not exactly the same as being retired, but it's pretty similar in a lot of ways.
djeiasbsbo 6y ago
I understand and while we all understand that it isn't technically "unlimited", they still are just using the service they pay for in the way it was advertised to them. If it isn't unlimited and you don't want to deal with that 0.1% of users, do not advertise it that way. Again, I think it's ridiculous to use online storage services in that way but still, is it really fair to blame the consumer here?
skylanh 6y ago
I use some of the techniques as offsite "well, maybe it's with that cloud storage?" disaster recovery backup options. I have used Backblaze, and was storing 16TB there, and that was $50/month. I did a simple envelope calculation, decided I could either hand-roll a offsite system with 2x consumer harddrives, or look for other options. I have 28TB backed up with another provider now. Why haven't I tried either AWS or Azure cold-tier storage? I have maybe 2 hours a month where I can spend looking into solutions to my offsite backup situation, and I am somewhat concerned that I could mess up the AWS solution and cost myself thousands of dollars. This coupled with a lack of time, significant competing concerns (keeping a job during a global pandemic job market; work-load; personal life), and "eh, I'll get to it"-laziness, means I have to put this on the back burner. If you handed me a simple solution using rclone, zfs send, btrfs-send, or a pre-canned "this is what it would cost" Bacula approach, I would move to it.

lou1306 6y ago

> r/DataHoarder To be honest, 99% of the posts there are about building your own NAS. And I don't fully agree with the "we can't have nice things" narrative in the Google Photos case. How bad was Google hurt by the actions of these few "power users"? Before that, how much did they profit by driving out competition with their "unlimited" plan? (Which, by the way, was neatly integrated and advertised into their own mobile OS...)

bostonsre 6y ago
The uber strategy (speaking of ponzi scheme...).
bluedino 6y ago
99% of the users of unlimited plans are only storing a smalll amount of data
dodobirdlord 6y ago
I don't really get the gnashing of teeth about Google withdrawing the "Unlimited". Google never promised anyone "Unlimited" anything, the details of the contract always said "we reserve the right to modify this in the future". People who aren't data hoarders, who contracted with Google in the spirit of the contract ("more storage than you will need"), are still getting what they signed up for. People who contracted with Google not in the spirit of the contract ("Haha, unlimited, huh?") are also getting exactly what they signed up for - the letter, rather than the spirit of the contract. Google is keeping the spirit of the contract with people who took them up on the spirit of the contract, and Google is keeping the letter of the contract with people who took them up on the letter of the contract. I cannot see any fault in this.

dawnerd 6y ago

I don’t think it’s them, I think it’s the people at r/plex that are using google drive as their data store and people bragging about having 100s of tbs of content.

woleium 6y ago
I doubt that is so much of an issue as most of the content will be deduplicated across users.
- fuzxi 6y ago
  Standard practice is to encrypt media stored on cloud storage to avoid DMCA fuckery.