Comment by JohnFen
2 days ago
OneDrive doesn't always work fine, though. I avoid it like the plague because a OneDrive screwup caused me loss of valuable data.
Was it user error? Maybe, maybe not, but that's irrelevant. If it's so easy to make an unrecoverable and catastrophic mistake, it's a tool that's too dangerous to use on the daily.
How do you lose data on OneDrive? It has a 30 day (if not longer) file history.
All I know is that a bunch of files reverted to very old versions and I found no way to recover from that. It was pure loss. How did it happen? I have no idea. But how doesn't matter at all to me. What matters to me is that OneDrive proved itself untrustworthy.
> If it's so easy to make an unrecoverable and catastrophic mistake, it's a tool that's too dangerous to use on the daily.
Shift+Del and rm -rf don't have any guardrails around them. In tech you are surrounded by footguns and bear traps. MS made it that much worse by wrapping these in dark patterns that may change without notice but the logic that "dangerous things should be prohibited" is a perfectly good way to end up living in an environment where someone else curates what you can and cannot do. For your protection of course.
A tool isn't dangerous because you can make an unrecoverable and catastrophic mistake (you can make one with a kitchen knife and we still use them every day). It's truly dangerous if it can and does act against your wishes, interests, and reasonable expectations like OneDrive did.
The article is accompanied by a TikTok video I can't scrub through so I can't tell why it's not possible to go to OneDrive's recycle bin and recover the lost data.
Here it is really not a "footgun" that can shoot you accidentally, it is really volontary awful dark patterns.
You say delete my "onedrive" storage content, why on earth someone sane should expect that Microsoft will also delete the data one your computer, that you never asked to be sent to OneDrive in the first place.
The comment I replied to suggested a generalization that "a too that allows you to make grave mistakes is too dangerous to use. We're surrounded by tools in real life and computers which allow you to make major mistakes (ever run a copy/sync tool like robocopy and others with source monitoring, and someone was deleting from the source after seeing the copy at the destination?). So I don't agree with their generalization. Tools aren't dangerous because of what they can do or because they allow you to make mistakes.
But this wasn't a mistake, or at least not an unprovoked one. The user did nothing wrong. They operated under reasonable assumptions established by decades of computer tools. This was a user who didn't get cut by the knife's blade but by its handle. The tool was configured to operate against the user's interests, wishes, and reasonable expectations. This isn't "a dangerous tool" this is a developer who weaponized a tool. The danger is the practice of misleading the user. MS took a pipe and made it a pipe bomb, the solution isn't to declare pipes to dangerous to use.
> why on earth someone sane should expect that Microsoft will also delete the data one your computer, that you never asked to be sent to OneDrive in the first place
From a reasonable user perspective of course it makes no sense. If you investigate from a technical perspective, knowing how the tool works, it "works as intended". OD Backup is not backup, it's storage. That's the first trick MS pulls. OD didn't back up your data, it moved it to the cloud and didn't tell you. This is the second trick MS pulls. Disabling the "backup" means disabling the storage of your single copy of the data. This isn't a trick, it's just the level of competence at MS.
1 reply →
I agree, OneDrive is very similar to `rm -rf`. But I think that is a bad thing for a file sync service to be.
It's worse, because it runs without the users explicit knowledge or consent, and it lacks the implicit guardrails `rm -rf` has (in that most people who use Linux and the terminal are at least literate).
> MS made it that much worse by wrapping these in dark patterns that may change without notice
> It's truly dangerous if it can and does act against your wishes, interests, and reasonable expectations.
Do you really not consider the first to be an example of the second?
> Shift+Del and rm -rf don't have any guardrails around them.
Shift+Del asks for confirmation. I would expect OneDrive to do at least that much before deleting files off the local machine, even if they're recoverable.
> Do you really not consider the first to be an example of the second?
I think too many people got the impression that I'm defending OD and can't get out of that trench. My point is that a generic tool being able to do dangerous things isn't a high enough bar to say don't use it (often). A tool being able to do dangerous things in the manner I described above is a completely different devil. The "how" you end up doing a dangerous thing is what should be punished.
I want to be able to do whatever I want with my computer and my data and not have someone define what's "too dangerous" for me to use. But what happened here wasn't what the users wanted, or could reasonably expect to happen. That's the key.
> Shift+Del asks for confirmation
I'm sure OD also asked for some confirmation. By that time it's too late, you're confirming what you think will happen, not what will actually happen. When you confirm shift+del you know what you are confirming. When you confirm OD's dialog you're confirming under misleading assumptions.
> "dangerous things should be prohibited"
I never asserted that. I asserted that if a tool is that dangerous, it shouldn't be used on a daily basis. I stand by that. Use it if it solves a problem for you, but intentionally every time, not as a matter of habit or in the background with automation.
> It's truly dangerous if it can and does act against your wishes, interests, and reasonable expectations.
OneDrive meets those criteria.
> I asserted that if a tool is that dangerous, it shouldn't be used on a daily basis
Agree to disagree. I will repeat, we are surrounded by dangerous tools that we use on a daily basis. Clearly the "danger" part is not the criteria that defines if or how often you should use the tool.
> OneDrive meets those criteria.
Correct. But those are my criteria, and I believe they are the ones that carry my argument. Your criteria was "is dangerous" which is not enough to carry the weight of your conclusion.
2 replies →
Shift+Del and rm -rm are pretty hard to use by accident. Onedrive comes with the computer preconfigured to do some pretty unintuitive things.
For example, if a user does not actively change the save location, at least for office apps, the default behavior is to save to onedrive.
Shift and -f are the guardrails.
Use `rm -r` and just press Delete if you want to have protection.
Options are not a guardrail. Documented options that operate intuitively and consistently are the guardrail.
This is where OD failed by MS's design, it didn't operate intuitively and consistently with almost any other computer tool, and didn't document the behavior properly in a way that the user can take advantage of the knowledge.
rm -rf doesn't get this:
https://i.imgur.com/LZGEpGt.png
"Content not viewable in your region" (Imgur isn't available in UK)
Strangely poetic!
I really want to make my own translation pack that turns all "Not Now" buttons into "Fuck Off"