I hate to be insensitive to people, but, it is important to point these things out when the message will hit hardest.

I remember, a long long time ago, someone I knew had just ripped his massive compact disc collection to his Windows computer, and, by default, they were in encrypted WMA format. He was very receptive to me pointing out how bad DRM was, because now he couldn't copy them to his other computers, and how Microsoft lied to him.

DO NOT TRUST THE CLOUD

That's a very different scenario.

> that's kinda like arguing that a library that accepts book donations and then goes on to shreds book that nobody is borrowing anymore is justified in their actions.

You mean, all libraries?

Yeah, fair cop. My point was meant to be a library that shreds books without first attempting to sell them, give them away or otherwise archive them (which is what most libraries do before they resort to shredding books).

Not really, though. If you donate a book that cannot be made presentable with minimal effort, it will get scrapped, rather than be put up for sale or archived. There's only limited budget, and the discard bin costs less, by far, compared to staffing a book sale (even if it's once a year) or books take up space in "an archive" when another branch or library has the book in active circulation. Way more books get discarded than you might think.

It seems helpful to me. Microsoft is not a startup, there is no reason to assume they would just purge Hotmail accounts one day. Reminding people that corporations lose data, whether accidental or intentional, and that they should take individual responsibility for the data they consider significant, is important.

It probably doesn't help the parent feel much better about his situation, but it does help all the other readers to highlight and learn from his experience, and especially to emphasize that such adversarial action against user data is a significant risk at large, established companies as well as small ones.

My point was that "you should make backups" is useful advice. "You should've made backups" is not, because it places blame on the user for placing trust in someone else.

Sure, you and I know that effectively all "cloud" companies will resort to this sort of scummy bullshit, but let's not blame users who have lost data because a company decided to delete their data with reckless abandon.

> Really, the problem is that online services (startups that are shutting down are the worst offenders) are allowed to destroy user data with reckless abandon.

How much are you paying them, per month, to safeguard your data?

Respectfully, I don't think that's the right question to be asking. Yes, you're correct that since I haven't paid them they currently have no legal obligation to treat my data with respect (usually because I've agreed to non-binding EULA that is vague enough to allow for most abuses).

But look at it from a user's perspective. A small company shows up and says "hey, look at this great 'experience' you can get if you just give us some of your data". So the user gives them some of their data, and that overall builds the community around whatever the company is selling. Then one day the company decides to delete the user's data without warning (or without their acknowledgement or consent). The data itself had worth to the users, but more importantly it is the reason why the company has a community. The fact they didn't treat it with respect is an ethics problem. Just because users didn't pay you to act as a decent person doesn't mean you should treat their data as though it was worthless.

When Yahoo deleted GeoCities they managed to set the world record for the fastest destruction of the largest amount of user-created content. The entireity of GeoCities was several terabytes (in 2009 that was small enough to fit a few hundred dollars worth of hard-drives). Was Yahoo legally obligated to not delete 22 years worth of user content in a single afternoon? No. Were they complete and utter assholes for doing it? Absolutely. Was completely un-necessary? Yes.

Whatever their ads or user statstics pitched to VCs brings in.

I don't think the library comparison is close enough. More like you leave your cherished pet at the vet for the week and the vet decides to put it down because there are too many pets and their font 5 terms and conditions displayed on the wall allow them to do so.