Hating on Dropbox seems to be the flavour of the week on the intarwebs it seems. Fascinating to see how easily geeks fall prey to basic thought manipulation by the media. Aren't we supposed to be smarter than the average bear?

I've recommended Dropbox to a number of personal friends throughout the past couple of years. When the first security incident (Dropbox employees being able to read files when they said they couldn't) came up a couple of months ago, one of my friends emailed me to ask what the deal was with this company. He doesn't know them from HN. He only knows them from me. In my circle, I'm the one responsible for Dropbox.

When the password incident came up a couple of weeks ago, I was on guard and emailed my friends proactively before they found out about it via news sites.

I don't bash on Dropbox because:

  - they have a great product
  - security is hard
  - startups are hard
  - they are a yc company

But I think it's fair to say that:

  - they made mistakes
  - they handled the initial mistakes poorly
  - they are now working to address any issues, but...
  - ...every subsequent action is therefore under more scrutiny

In summary, there is no thought manipulation by the media. There are a lot of lessons that can be learned from this, but being dismissive of it is the exact wrong thing.

I think people bash on them because they are so widely used, and they have messed up twice, both times very publicly. I love their service and continue to use it, but I am not impressed with their track record about security issues. Security is probably the biggest reason people will avoid offsite storage of their data.

They've made multiple mistakes, and handled the fallout of those mistakes badly. "Hating" is a term used by people who want to trivialise legitimate concerns.

You've mirrored my thoughts, and quite succinctly. However, I feel that it's not the media that is the seed of the manipulation but other geeks (through their blogs or comments on news.yc). Remember, the media lurks on sites like news.yc, picking up and amplifying trends for mass-market consumption. It's what makes News.YC so special, if not a little dangerous.

What if it's not manipulation? What if it's passive "infection" with a meme?

People are much less in control of what they think, than they think. So to speak.

b/c they were advertising a "safe" way to store your files and they seem to suggest in that advertising that nobody but you can view the contents of your files stored on dropbox. however, that is not the case...hence the flak. is

also a universal TOS that pretty much says "we can do whatever the fuck we want." doesn't make false/misleading advertising legal. besides, the TOS you linked to is a universal one...any "Additional Terms" will override them and are usually more specific. for example, http://mail.google.com/mail/help/terms.html

From the same page:

"Other than the limited license set forth in Section 11, Google acknowledges and agrees that it obtains no right, title or interest from you (or your licensors) under these Terms in or to any Content that you submit, post, transmit or display on, or through, the Services, including any intellectual property rights which subsist in that Content (whether those rights happen to be registered or not, and wherever in the world those rights may exist)."

That clause is by definition perfectly useless, because of its preample: "other than set forth in Section 11". So it does nothing to limit the license granted in section 11. It's just eye candy.

Now, if you could define clearly for me what "in connection with" in section 11 means: use such Content in connection with the provision of those services

Does "in connection with" include the need to make money on that free service by selling that content to a third-party? Where does the connection start and stop?

Because people don't remember stuff that happened over a month ago.