
Ente – Privacy friendly alternative to Google Photos - vishnumohandas
https://ente.io/
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DinakarS
Nice product you have here. Is there a free version or any plans for free
version? Why do you have to say "unfortunate event of a shutdown" when the
project isn't even launched? You can maybe put that under a FAQ (like you've
done in the comments) but not like this.

That said, I have signed up and I'm looking forward to your project launches
;)

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vishnumohandas
Hey Dinakar, thanks for the feedback!

> Is there a free version

Yes, the plan is to give away the first 1GB of storage for free so that users
can try out the product before making a commitment.

> unfortunate event of a shut down

My "shut down strategy" was the one of the first questions every prospective
user I spoke to asked about, so I felt the need to clarify. I'll figure out a
less intrusive way to get this information across. Thanks again for the
comment. :)

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vishnumohandas
Hello HN, creator here.

I've been building ente to scratch my own itch, and I'm close to launching a
beta program with mobile and web clients.

Posting this here hoping to get some feedback and perhaps even my first few
users. :)

~~~
brudgers
Are you planning to make money with it?

If so, how?

~~~
vishnumohandas
The first 1GB of storage is free. After that I’ll be charging users
$5/100GB/month.

~~~
brudgers
So $60/year. About the retail price of a 2TB external hard disk. Or a 256GB SD
card. Or half a dozen 128GB thumb drives.

That's the base case you're up against. It's what all photo hosting sites are
up against. But in particular, none of those has a privacy issue. And for
anyone who has been around, each is likely to be more reliable than a web
based photo solution if history is a guide because the first order economics
don't work in the long term.

But history also indicates that anyplace that can store photos online is
likely to be used for illegal images such as child pornography and copyright
violations. To put it another way, technology is not the critical issue.

Don't misunderstand me, it's cool that you built a system. And there are
problems with Google photos. The reason there appears to be an opportunity is
because the hard problems are really hard and non-obvious.

Good luck.

~~~
vishnumohandas
> anyplace that can store photos online is likely to be used for illegal
> images

This is a valid point, and I'll have to figure out a way to craft my T&C such
that I'm not held accountable for the decrypted data.

As for the rest, as someone who is okay with paying for convenience and bells
and whistles, while I understand your view point, it's hard for me to relate
to it. I can only hope for there to be more like me.

But I'm grateful to you for taking the time out to share your feedback. Thank
you.

~~~
brudgers
The hosting issue is a matter of criminal law. Terms and conditions don’t
matter in that space. They can’t transfer responsibility for breaking the law.

So the unit economics have to cover the costs of dealing with the legal
liability. And just for giggles, if you’re making money from hosting illegal
content, law enforcement is more likely to pay attention and act with greater
force. There’s no low hanging fruit at any kind of scale. If 0.01% of people
are bad actors, it’s even money there’s one in the first 5000 accounts - but
only if the account holders are randomly distributed among all people. But bad
actors are motivated and the cost setting up a free account is asymmetric to
the whackamole effort thwarting them.

Again good luck.

~~~
vishnumohandas
Do you have any recommendations for how I could work around this?

One thing I could do is to not offer free storage at all, but that would be
unfair to the rest.

Another option is to not enable encryption within the free storage tier and to
depend on scripts to identify and block accounts uploading illegal content.

But with these approaches I’d be discouraging only those actors who are
unwilling to submit their card details.

I took a look at Mega’s terms[1] and their stance is similar to what I earlier
proposed. Also, they seem to be thriving by simply being responsive to
takedown requests.

Again, I’m curious to know if you think there are more elegant ways to handle
this problem.

Thanks!

[1]: [https://mega.nz/terms](https://mega.nz/terms)

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j1nd4L
Takes up a serious privacy issue which isn't getting surfaced for google
photos given its free. There has to be something shady happening behind the
scene with google photos data given its offering such expensive cloud storage
unlimited free.

1\. Any reason for the storage pricing to be significantly more expensive than
other cloud storage providers like drive, onedrive? 2\. How do you plan to
support sharing if the data is encrypted using the user password generated key
?

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vishnumohandas
> There has to be something shady happening behind the scene

Haha, I believe so too.

> more expensive

Not owning data centers definitely is one reason. But I believe that I'm
cheaper when compared to other alternatives[1] that are attempting to solve
the same problem.

> sharing

When you attempt to share a file, the file-password is encrypted with a
freshly generated key, sent to the server, and this key is then shared via
public key cryptography (or within a URL fragment in case of a public-share).

[1]: [https://crypt.ee](https://crypt.ee)

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blr_lpm
Do you plan to introduce family plans? Also, in the case of shared albums, who
will bear the cost of storage?

~~~
vishnumohandas
> family plans?

In the MVP, no. But eventually, yes.

> shared albums, who will bear the cost of storage?

Users who own the photos within the album will.

