Dropbox Ending Support for Public Links

[scooter]

Who here is actually paying for Dropbox?  (I am)

If you're not, then I'm not quite sure what standing you've got to complain.

I'm glad we have you here to let us know what we are and aren't allowed to be annoyed by.


Anyway, I don't think enough people rely on this to really move the needle. The usual angry internet mob is pretty subdued. That's unfortunate. 

I don't see a good solution here for the old stuff. Going forward I'll obviously ditch Dropbox and use something else, but there's no chance of me fixing 7,000 links by hand, and I don't see an obvious way to archive them either. If there's a one-for-one feature out there with predictable URLs, a mass copy/replace could be possible, but I don't see one. Lots of internet points to anyone that can find a solution.

[Bobchillingworth]

Who here is actually paying for Dropbox?  (I am)

If you're not, then I'm not quite sure what standing you've got to complain.

Oh, this is very simple, so please allow me to help you understand.


Dropbox offers a service. Now that service is much worse, and as a direct consequence will cause problems for Realms Beyond. Therefore, we are complaining.

That many of us did not bribe Dropbox to keep them from turning their service to shit does not mean that we are not impacted as long-time users. Because we are impacted, we are aggrieved. Because we are aggrieved, we protest.


I also complain when traffic lights are unreasonably slow, even in jurisdictions where my tax dollars do not fund them, and when Youtube removes content, even though I am not a "Youtube Red" subscriber.


Get over it.

[KingOfPain]

Actually, one does not have to be a paying member to have the right to complain. Many of these free services have some sort of guarantee of service to entice people to join and stay. Example, my online email provider guarantees the free services (offered at the time I joined) will always be free. The service even go as far to "encourage" members to have multiple email accounts. They have paid accounts too, but the free accounts is their asset for advertisement money. That is not the only way the company is making money off the free accounts, there is big pay off for a startup when they go IPO or gets absorbed. Every member counts. I believe I made a post about that ... here is back in 2014

What is Your NET Worth

In other words, Elon Musk made $84.42 off me (on top of all other benefits) when he sold PayPal. 

So free members have the right to complain, but it's only effective if you can make a big enough stink. If enough people complains, they get a bad rap, which equals less paying customer, and less investors. Even if they want to be absorbed, they still need the membership count and a good reputation.

[DaveV]

The hammer drops, and it's even worse than I expected. I thought I'd have to go through my old threads and fix the links one by one, but there appears to be no way now to share a picture directly to a thread.

[Fenn]

The pictures in my X-COM thread are still up, so my method at least is still working.
e: For anybody who wants to keep on using Dropbox, I use this Chooser demo to grab a bunch of preview links at once: https://www.dropbox.com/developers/chooser

You still need to mess with the preview links' formatting to get them to embed properly though. Specifically for a link like this:

Code:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/r6fzxsj9eb5mj9g/StateofAffairs.png?dl=0

You need to replace "www" with "dl" and remove the "?dl=0" part at the end, leaving you with this:

Code:

https://dl.dropbox.com/s/r6fzxsj9eb5mj9g/StateofAffairs.png

Enclose that in img/screenshot tags and it'll display the image. Up to you if it's worth the hassle or not.

[DaveV]

Thanks, Fenn. I was able to avoid editing the link by clicking the "direct link" button on the second line.

[Fenn]

I wouldn't recommend using those - according to the page I linked, these 'direct links' expire four hours after creation.

[DaveV]

[Alhazard]

You can use

Code:

[img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/r6fzxsj9eb5mj9g/StateofAffairs.png[/img]

Works pretty well so far for my new thread.

[DaveV]

Bumping because links seem to be expiring after a day or less. Is there a workaround, or is it time to give up on dropbox?