Microsoft Calls Off OneDrive Photo-pocalypse

After Microsoft recently imposed storage limits for photos in a user's OneDrive account, Microsoft has now reversed course after receiving a barrage of backlash. From a report: In August, Microsoft announced that photos in a user's OneDrive Gallery and in each of their saved photo albums would count separately toward the company's cloud-based limit of five gigabytes, according to Neowin. The update was expected to roll out on October 16, which would force some users to encounter storage ceilings as the extra data was added to their OneDrive, preventing additional files from syncing. Customers were surprised by the abrupt policy change, so surprised in fact that the company caved to user backlash and recently announced that the change was no longer on the table.

"On August 31, 2023, we began to communicate an upcoming update to our cloud storage infrastructure that would result in a change in how OneDrive photos and photo albums data is counted against your overall cloud storage quota," Microsoft said in an email to customers, which has also been posted to the company's Support page. "This change was scheduled to start rolling out on October 16, 2023. Based on the feedback we received, we have adjusted our approach, we will no longer roll out this update."

not really

[Anonymous Coward]

This change was "free" -- MSFT uses de-duplication so it doesn't cost MSFT anything when people have multiple copies of photos, it was just some jackass's idea to push people towards paid storage and enough people got pissed that said jackass backed down.

Just pull a Comcast:

[Tablizer]

...make image loading gradually slower and slower so people gradually stop wanting to use it for photos.

If storage was a problem...

[Smidge204]

...maybe they should have made it opt-in instead of installed and active by default, resulting in millions of users unknowingly uploading the contents of their computer to the cloud?

=Smidge=

Reap what you Sow?

[JoeDuncan]

I mean, if you hand over storage of your personal photos to a faceless megacorp...

What's the actual complaint here?!?

"I was stupid and let something predictable happen to me and now I am mad at my stupid?"

5gb limit?

[bhcompy]

Which limit is 5gb? OneDrive is 1tb (per account) for M365 customers I thought

Re:

[EvilSS]

Personal accounts not M365. By default you get 5GB for free. https://www.microsoft.com/en-u... [microsoft.com]

Next they'll probably try ...

[Big Bipper]

Next they'll probably try ... giving you unlimited storage, as long as you agree to let them use it for training AI. They win two ways. They get to train their AI and they also are allowed to use your mined data. They can't sell your data on, but they get to use it to make $ off you in other ways.

Re: Next they'll probably try ...

[sectokia]

Onedrive is already not encrypted and they read and train ai on everything. They offer an encrypted vault section that is meant to be encrypted and to end, but you are only allowed to put so much in it and it has an extra layer of unlocking so most people donâ(TM)t use it. Still itâ(TM)s better than google who if you ever have uploaded a photo to - google have the right to use your photo for wherever they want

No problem

[PPH]

I'll just store all my photos as in-line objects in Word documents.