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Dropbox's Jan 1st 2027 terms of service
- xtoilette 11d agoTL;DR?
- chrisandchris 11d agoI did a comparison with an LLM of my choice and there was no meaningful difference (or nothing I would consider HN-worthy).
- sph 11d agoGiven the HN-worthy differences posted by others, here’s another example of why it’s not a good idea to delegate your thinking to LLMs.
- kenferry 11d agoI… guess? I'm not sure why this was posted. None of these changes seem important.
- 0x20Fearless 11d agoI saw a comment and didn’t prompt an LLM and see the whole difference: https://www.diffchecker.com/QD8AKShC/ https://www.diffchecker.com/QD8AKShC/
- charcircuit 11d ago- You must be 18+ - You must access Dropbox every 6 months (from 12) if you have a free to ensure they don't delete your account
- webprofusion 11d agoDiff or it didn't happen
- nixass 11d agoWell, diff it then?
- GuestFAUniverse 11d ago(I'm a former user of dropbox.) Good services make change explicit. Dropbox seems to have degraded into incompetence. Unable to provide good services.
- adrithmetiqa 11d agoLong time Dropbox user here. I would disagree. In my opinion they still have the best file sync platform of the big providers, easily beating onedrive and Google drive for reliability, especially with hundreds of thousands of files.
- GuestFAUniverse 11d ago100% It's 2026 and they're handling IT like pariahs of the stone age. Even they grey beards of the 70s would have worked that out easily.
- dannyw 11d agoOh it's probably intentional. I've seen efforts to simplify terms of service get rejected because "more people might read it if it's shorter".
- haunter 11d agoDiffchecker for the save https://www.diffchecker.com/QD8AKShC/ https://www.diffchecker.com/QD8AKShC/
- aurareturn 11d agoSuper useful. Any open source tools like this?
- haunter 11d agohttps://diffviewer.vercel.app/v2/diff?id=diff-9462664621608930624#EERWZnqniuVEq8hMSdBT0g https://diffviewer.vercel.app/v2/diff?id=diff-94626646216089... https://github.com/technikhil314/offline-diff-viewer https://github.com/technikhil314/offline-diff-viewer
- deleted 11d ago[deleted]
- rlk 11d agoLooks like the major changes are: - some stuff about Teams that's mostly only relevant if you're using your work email for a personal account - minimium age 13 -> 18; add "Dropbox may use and rely on information from third parties, including age signals from app stores, for the purpose of enforcing this restriction." - free accounts may be terminated after 6 months of no use (previously 12 months) - removed "If you reside in the EU, the European Commission provides for an online dispute resolution platform, which you can access here: https://ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr https://ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr." from the dispute resolution process.
- LoganDark 11d agoThat last point is funny... so arbitration agreements are designed to make the process intentionally more difficult. Can't provide too many hints!
- debugnik 11d agoI don't think that's the reason. From the linked site: > The European Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) Platform is discontinued as of 20 July 2025
- binaryturtle 11d agoIf you leave that in it's actually worse, since the platform was discontinued. I had to fix all my client's projects to remove this stuff. One of those stillborn ideas of the EU.
- big85 11d agoMajor changes: 1. You must be 18 to use Dropbox. Previously, you had to be 13 if in the United States, or 16 if higher. Dropbox may use information "Dropbox may use and rely on information from third parties, including age signals from app stores, for the purpose of enforcing this restriction." 2. Your account may be terminated if you don't have a Paid account and haven't accessed for 6 months. Previously, it was 12 months. 3. If you have multiple accounts tied to the same email address, and one is banned, the others may also be banned. 4. "Refunds are only issued if required by law." -> "Refunds are only issued in limited circumstances or if required by law." 5. You automatically agree to the new terms if you continue to have an account. Previously, it was only if you continued to use the service. 6. Some terms covering Teams accounts.
- applfanboysbgon 11d ago> 5. You automatically agree to the new terms if you continue to have an account. I would really love to see courts throw this BS out.
- necovek 11d agoI agree with you in principle. It would also potentially invalidate clauses like the one in GPL license too: "this version or any later version" — how can anyone consent to yet-unknown terms? In this particular case and going after the summary from big85, there's one case of legal compliance (like age restrictions — it applies in appropriate jurisdictions even if the ToS is not updated) or maybe two (banning per-account vs per-owner), some widening of the terms to the benefit of the customer (like refunds being permitted in "special circumstances" on top of "required by law, with only "reductionist" change being about lowering service window for unused free accounts (in some jurisdictions, even this could be about respecting data privacy laws — companies are obligated to remove any data which is not used after a certain time, though I think this is 12 months even under GDPR). As such, I believe this would not be a good case where you can bring enough light how this type of clause is harming one side to the contract.
- Gabrys1 11d ago
- drgo 11d agoI switched to Sync last year. Much cheaper, better quality.
- egeozcan 11d agoI didn't know about Sync. TIL someone had the guts to start a company named "Sync" in 2011.
- xprnio 11d agoLet that sync in
- 2b3a51 11d agoYes, brave name choice. I went to have a look and the home page is nice, well laid out, and has links to documents. Small free tier to put your feet in the shallow end, and a couple of monthly plans, one aimed at individuals and the other at orgs. Perhaps a family plan would have benefits? Alas no linux support, not even an api to allow the use of some terminal command to get round GUI fragmentation. Searching for 'sync online storage with linux' leads to a recent redit thread and a Mint Linux forum thread.
- drgo 11d agonot sure if this helps: https://help.sync.com/hc/en-us/articles/55076263500051-How-to-access-Sync-from-Dolphin-on-Linux https://help.sync.com/hc/en-us/articles/55076263500051-How-t...
- drgo 11d agoforgot to link: https://help.sync.com/hc/en-us https://help.sync.com/hc/en-us
- zdc1 11d agoThis person has over 1000 submissions. Going for the quantity-first approach I guess... Edit: following up my less productive comment with a productive one: this ToS update was crowd-sourced diff treasure-hunt with, at the end, no treasure to be found. These ToS changes are really quite unremarkable. I wonder which change of terms OP decided were interesting enough to post about.
- pndy 11d agoThere's at least 10 other accounts who do the same
- catoc 11d agoThis account has 50 submissions in the last two hours! [Edit: not the parent; the posting account] I don’t know why GP’s comment was flagged because submitting at a rate of 25 submissions PER HOUR is not done out of a genuine desire to share something that may be of interest to fellow human beings. Not even for personal bookmarking
- pndy 11d agoSome accounts have a clearly more privileged status here and are allowed to upload content without limits - especially from big outlets.
- catoc 11d agoStill why does a comment noticing that get flagged? I cannot imagine it’s Dang doing that, he consistently comes across as much too reasonably for that. Does that mean flagging is automated when criticizing ‘big outlets’ spamming HN?!? (The spamming account comes across as a person from their bio)
- catoc 11d agoAnd now this honest question is getting down-voted!! What’s going on?
- hjkl0 11d agoWhat’s a good Dropbox alternative? Especially for Macs. Feels like they spent twenty years just making the Mac client worse.
- Scaled 11d agoOpen source SyncThing
- simongray 11d agoSelf-hosted Seafile + Tailscale works great for me.
- NietTim 11d agoIf you only have ios and mac clients why not icloud?
- LeoPanthera 11d agoiCloud Drive is the obvious choice.
- haunter 11d agoLast I've tried iCloud Drive is not preserving file attributes especially if you want to use it cross OS between Mac and Windows. Dropbox does.
- fg137 11d agoLast time I checked, there was no file history, which basically meant it's useless to me.
- prodigycorp 11d agoiCloud Drive does not allow you to recover files if you put them into the trash and empty it by accident. I learned this the hardest of ways.
- LeoPanthera 11d agoThat seems... reasonable? You have to trash the files and empty the trash before you lose them. Isn't that what the trash is for?
- swiftcoder 11d agoI guess teenagers don't have any need to sync files, eh? Hate to see this gradual erosion of internet access for young people - I'd bet half the notable members of this very site started their career trajectory by learning how to break/fix computers in middle school or before
- iLoveOncall 11d agoThis has nothing to do with that. They probably realized that teenagers are a small enough portion of their userbase that the loss of revenue (and probably lack thereof to be fair) is far outweighed by the opportunity to ask users for their ID.
- ta988 11d agoIt will simply teach them how to go around those "protections". And put them at risk of using shaddy services to do so. Exactly like what happened with the war on drugs...
- paul7986 11d agoHmmmmm today is a very different world compared to when we used the Internet to learn how to code. Now with Ai doing all the coding is learning how to code even happenning? Also, just talked two friends who work for mid-size companies and last week both of their CEOs told them to just point Ai to their Jira tickets to finish all their tasks. Anyone else hearing their CEOs instruct the same thing?
- d0mine 11d agoIt is not about age. It is just a way to tie accounts to a real life identity. It won't be surprising if the requirement comes from some alphabet agency.
- dgellow 11d agoDont they already have the payment information?
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- lukeify 11d agoAmazing Dropbox went from a brilliantly simple service to this stagnating corporate swamp of ooze. Yet another fascinating example of how headcount correlates with quality decline.
- bayindirh 11d agoThe pricing got very complicated, that part is true. On the other hand, service quality didn’t go down. They added many small features which makes things easier, on the other hand. I use a bunch of additional services they offer. They work well, make me spend less money and save my time (e.g.: send, transcription, advanced sharing controls).
- microtonal 11d agoWe loved Dropbox and had a family subscription. One of the main reasons we stopped using them (besides it being a US company and Trump threatening declare war to a fellow European NATO ally) was that even though we were paying users, they continuously badgered us with upsells. Using Maestral as a client made things better (at the loss of block-level sync + now unmaintained), but every time I had to log into the web interface I got stupid upsell ads. I once contacted their customer support about this and their answer was "Oh really? Can you send some examples?" So I sent them screenshots of all the upselling banners, popups, etc. that they showed and I never heard back from them. It also didn't make sense at all. Why, if I'm using Dropbox for family use, would I upgrade to a business plan?
- financetechbro 11d agoDropbox headcount has stayed relative flat since going public… what’s ur point?
- deleted 11d ago[deleted]
- ak39 11d agoWhy hasn't anyone created a windows and mac client that git pushes changes to remote after file activities of local computer, and polls remote repo every 1 minute for changes to pull? I'd gladly pay for that. :-)
- jonny2811 11d agoi think that's kind of what rclone is https://github.com/rclone/rclone https://github.com/rclone/rclone haven't used it yet. i either back up my data with restic or sync it to other devices with syncthing, but those are tiny files (keepassxc dbs)
- Trung0246 11d agoUnfortunately rclone for some stupid reason is blocked on my corporate account :(
- dreamcompiler 11d agoRclone doesn't support MacOS extended file attributes. Or it didn't in the past anyway.
- nottorp 11d agoI don't think that will play well with binary files. Even as small as a PDF of a few pages?
- throwaway270925 11d agoNo need for git, syncthing does exactly that (listening to file activity events in selected folders and syncing the change, with twoway sync if so desired) and its free!
- benhurmarcel 11d agoSounds like git annex assistant https://git-annex.branchable.com/assistant/ https://git-annex.branchable.com/assistant/
- kristianc 11d agoDropbox will be one of the next Bending Spoons acquisitions. Low growth, none of the upsell or product extension things they've done have really worked out, and no-one's idea of what the future looks like.
- bayindirh 11d agoI don't understand this mentality. Growth must be explosively exponential or things are bad, so company must sell out, close shop and go. So, Google should sell Google Drive, Box shall close down, PCloud must cease to exist, Mega shall sell itself to a three letter agency a-la Crypto AG, Sugarsync shall vanish, etc... Yet we are here. These are all stable products chugging along.
- kristianc 11d agoThat’s the bargain Dropbox made when it took VC and then went public. Public markets don’t price a company purely on today’s cash flow, they price the expected stream of future cash flows. If growth stalls and the attempts to create new growth vectors don’t work, the valuation adjusts accordingly, and at some point an acquisition can become the rational outcome.
- simonebrunozzi 11d agoI don't think so. Bending Spoons need "great" deals to go after, such as Airtable, etc. Dropbox has a market cap of ~$8B, and it's not "cheap" compared to revenues, etc. If Dropbox goes "down" in the next few years, perhaps you will eventually be right.
- duttish 11d agoI've been a happy customer of Tresorit for several years now. Give them a try if you're fed up with Dropbox. At first I was selective in what folders I synced but after a few months I decided to just sync my entire workspace folder with everything in it. Incredibly convenient, everything is automatically synced between my desktop and laptop. If you go this route look into filters, it's not a very advertised feature but works great for excluding build output, venvs and other stuff.
- sorbusherra 11d agoi'm so happy with syncthing project.
- Lukas_Skywalker 11d agoIf the enshittification continues, it might be time to go back to rsync [0]. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
- pveierland 11d agoFunny that this is the only Dropbox post I've seen on HN besides infamous references to their launch post. You'd think there would be plenty of interesting improvements to make. Having been a paid user for the last decade my current experience is just getting error messages on my phone every week that something failed to sync, and that I have to re-enter the app every ~month to disable/enable syncing for my offline files, otherwise it doesn't work. I can't remember any time I've been pleasantly surprised by any change to the service.
- loehnsberg 11d agoThis leaves a lot of questions. Why are they raising the age limit? What legislation demands this? Will other services follow? And what if parents give consent? Are users on a family plan now forced to kick off their kids from the joined plan?
- bayindirh 11d agoDrobpox has an AI backend running on their own clusters. IOW, Dropbox runs their own local models, integrated to their offerings. As their AI offerings get more features, I believe they want to be on the safe side, so they increased the age limit.
- elnerd 11d agoDoes this mean that young adults that work for companies that use Dropbox, cannot collaborate with others using Dropbox?
- kotaKat 11d agoNot the first time Dropbox bros kicked kids off a platform. Mission SF Soccer remembers.
- Paianni 11d agoTBH, I'm happy because there's an old account I'm unable to access (email address was closed, recovery didn't work) that still has content I would prefer not to be public anymore. The sooner it can vanish the better.
- fg137 11d agoMy Dropbox account was deleted after years of inactivity. While it was definitely on me, and their terms clearly stated that "We reserve the right to" delete the account, I was surprised that no notification was sent. Yes, I checked my emails, nothing. Needles to say, I never used Dropbox since then.
- kmfrk 11d agoTrying to download all my 5GB of files from the web client gives me an "Attempted to zip too many files." I guess the only way to get or export your data is through the desktop client?
- throwaway270925 11d agoI recently used rclone for this, worked great!
- nojvek 11d agoI guess I need to find Dropbox alternative then. This is a bit too scary.