It's not really a ponzi scheme. You're not investing (uploading) your images with an expected return on that investment.
Unlimited means that you don’t have a set quota and as long as your usage doesn’t cross over into genuine abuse of the service that you don’t have to worry about it. If you cat /dev/random into your unlimited storage provider 24/7/365 you can’t really be surprised when they ban you.
Storing large amounts of random data merely to waste space might qualify as abuse. But that is a) a strawman as far as I can tell and b) it isn't always possible to tell apart random and encrypted/compressed data apart anyway.
Just admit all people want is to be able to ride the gullibility of people who aren't as picky about language as the people who actually give a crap about clear communication. What businesses want to sell is a conditionally vague statistically multiplexed service level, and I'm willing to bet most don't even go out of the way to let the User know what they're overall footprint within the scope of the entire system is, which is info they'd need to manage usage patterns themselves. It's the hallmark of manipulative language.
But it's comparable, in the sense that the "returns" for earlier customers (ongoing provision of storage service) are funded out of the contributions of later new customers, and when the supply of new customers runs out, the returns can no longer be funded and the system collapses.
Edit: Also not that the phrase "is a Ponzi scheme" is often used in opinion pieces to describe all kinds of business and economic models that are not literal Ponzi schemes: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22is+a+ponzi+scheme%22+-wha...
I think it's not just new users. It's also new content/files. Existing users uploading more pictures can also generate revenue, right?
> I think it's not just new users. It's also new content/files. Existing users uploading more pictures can also generate revenue, right?
Well, no; if it's an unlimited usage plan, then there's no more revenue from existing users, but they become more costly to support as time goes on, making the system ever more unsustainable and destined for collapse.
"there's no more revenue from existing users"
That's not what the article says. Existing users can create revenue. The cost could outweigh the revenue depending on the amount stored. If it were solely about new user adoption, then it wasn't presented properly in the article:
"They make money inversely proportional to how recent you stored the thing."
At each future stage a growth of fresh input is required to make up for a growing backlog of past transactions. Since the world is finite, the available growth must come to an end while the back log does not. (A possible disagreement with this is if expected media quality/size is growing in size similar to Moore's law.)
The author makes their own distinctions in the article, but I don't see how you could choose a more appropriate title without assuming a lot of pre-existing knowledge in the audience.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme
A more appropriate title could be "Unlimited Data Storage is Dependent on New User Adoption". No reason to use a title that doesn't fit and is just sensationalized marketing.
I suppose I should update more wikipedia entries, for example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_tree
References an early example of such a problem article: "Binary Tree". An outrageous use of metaphor that should clearly have been named "Data is in no way an oak".
The word "binary" is a modifier of the word "tree". Anyone with a basic understanding of English knows that a binary tree is different from an oak tree. The modifier in "ponzi scheme" is "ponzi". The very definition stated that it is a scheme related to financial investment and returns, which doesn't fit the situation in the article.
If you compare the binary tree and ponzi scheme examples, you will find them quite similar. You have base word (tree/scheme) and a modifier word (binary/ponzi). So your tree example is actually a great point supporting my argument - this may be a scheme, but it's not a ponzi scheme.
The ponzi scheme was very similar to offering unlimited plans despite most users having very little interest in storing much or having the constant but moderate usage pattern that would need to accompany that for it to run on ads. AFA schemes both are marketing gimmicks misrepresenting the market to sell an unlikely profit system as viable, and when it collapses the people sold the system's superiority to reasonable offers end up upset. Both of these gimmicks can be done intentionally or accidentally as described in the wiki entry.
Unlimited plans are in fact very similar to THE ponzi scheme, more so than an intentional ponzi-scheme-like fraud. Many even argue that the ponzi scheme is not a good representative of ponzi scheme frauds, rather many are based on fraudsters understanding the original ponzi scheme (ponzi himself probably did not initially understand he was getting into fraud of investors until the scheme already had investors.)
At any rate, you seem to understand that there's a lot of room for discussion on how unlimited media is like the ponzi scheme itself or a ponzi scheme fraud. Semantic arguments over who is defrauded and who expects what are pretty pointless as in modern finance the users and investors are all in the mix that is the public and is being uniformly addressed by the company whether in casual media or SEC filings.
>f an author isn't trustworthy or correct on this, then why should we listen to their other information in good faith?
The author is correct because of the word "like" in the title.