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Comment by josteink | Hacker News Reader

> These shenanigans finally made me delete my Dropbox account, and set up an OwnCloud instance on Digital Ocean. I've found the OC client to be very nice on the platforms I use (Linux, Windows, iOS

So an implementation-detail for a feature on a platform you don't use caused you to shift to another product, which doesn't even support the feature you are complaining about? Am I reading you correct?

By all means. If you're happy running a FOSS solution on servers you control, more power to you. I'm just confused about your reasoning.

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> So an implementation-detail for a feature on a platform you don't use caused you to shift to another product, which doesn't even support the feature you are complaining about? Am I reading you correct?

I don't think he's talking about only this one issue. Dropbox had an issue with something of this sort recently [0]. They secretly gave their Mac application root privileges. They may have crossed the line for him here. I should say that I'm not speaking for him but I can see how something like this could have been the last straw for someone.

I personally think that the way a company treats it customers is a good display of how good it's culture is. It's not a good sign that they did this.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12619722

Is this a different issue, or just a different part of the same thing ?

I hazard the latter since they have had a series of problems except the one here.

There was also a time that when you uploaded to Dropbox a file that was already on its servers, instead of storing the new file they stored a reference to the old one (that they already had) as per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2478567

If it's a feature I don't want and can't disable, yeah, I'm going to investigate alternatives that don't have it.

More likely referring to the fact that Dropbox has had many an issue lately of doing things that may not have been intended to look nefarious, but look that way nonetheless. This is just the last straw for some users, whether or not the feature was used by them.

I actually do have a Mac machine, but I use it so little I didn't include it.

Anyway, there have been other Dropbox issues of a similar nature reported here on HN, and while I haven't been harmed by them personally, it speak to a style of development I don't agree with.

But what finally pushed me over the edge, was this racist initiative at Dropbox. I want no part of that.

https://blogs.dropbox.com/dropbox/2016/12/diversity-at-dropb...

Automatically self-installing a component when I have removed it is malware, not "implementation detail".

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