Ask HN: What are you using to replace shared iCloud Photos albums?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28150772

136 107 5 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Please recommend a boomer friendly photo sharing service that is also privacy conscious…if such thing even exists.

Looking for easier/better alternatives than doing Nextcloud, ownCloud, etc.

brundolf• 5 years ago

Dropbox does automatic photo backups on Android and iOS. It also allows you to share files and folders, though I'm not sure how it compares to Apple Photos for "boomers"

robertoandred6• 5 years ago

Dropbox checks for CSAM too.

TimTheTinker3• 5 years ago

Checking for CSAM isn't the issue. The issue is that Apple's system design easily extends to checking all sorts of other things - political dissidents, journalists, etc.

Not only that, it commits a felony when it transmits found CSAM to a party other than NCMEC (i.e. Apple itself).

kureikain• 5 years ago

I used google photo/google drive.

yablak• 5 years ago

Google photos

ytch• 5 years ago

Google photos scans and report to police for photos in CSAM too.

max_2• 5 years ago

I have always used Mega[0]. It's real end to end encryption. I would argue it also has a superior user experience across all the others.

[0] https://mega.nz/

ComodoHacker2• 5 years ago

By the way, do they scan for CSAM?

max_2• 5 years ago

They couldn't even if they wanted. Due to the encryption

_009• 5 years ago

I remember meeting with KimDotCom lawyer a few years ago in SF. A very flamboyant-person. One of those guys who makes a big impression on you from the first sight.

While KimDotCom is an impressive hacker, I am not sure that I would love to be the target of the FEDs around the world as he is still in the eye of the US.

Fun story about MegaUpload.

I once lived in Argentina back in the MegaUpload days. At the time, piracy was the norm (not only in Argentina), the gov didn't care, and people where selling pirated, burned DVD on the streets. This was a downtown, a high transited area.

Then MegaUpload started to grow like fire, and I remember that starting at 4 pm, the internet would get awfully slow. As people get off their jobs to download the latest movie or episode out there. Then PopcornTime, and things got even worst. Cant find the stat, but I remember something along the line of 60% of Buenos Aires traffic being MegaUpload's at peak time (4-10pm), which caused a lot of controversy at the time.

Old days...

lostlogin2• 5 years ago

Old days…

Here in New Zealand we are only just finishing tidying up the fallout from the Dotcom fiasco now. Shame on us.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Dotcom

square_usual4• 5 years ago

Mega and Stingle are the only options I'm aware of that are "truly" private, and every other major cloud storage provider will scan your files for CSAM. The best way forward for truly privacy conscious people would be to roll their own NextCloud instance, because any public service that allows you to store E2EE images will get hunted by the Government for allowing CSAM if they reach any significant userbase. Case in point, even good ol' MegaUpload scanned for CSAM, because that's a bigger risk than getting sued by the MPAA.

jcun41282• 5 years ago

Dumb question but would an S3 bucket be scanned by CSAM?

Ehh idk seems like a dumb concern/losing battle. My thing is about IP. I picked up this e-ink tablet and it syncs to their cloud service for example. Which you can stop but still... Ahh. Just feels like going in circles, ISP knows your content, VPN, is your device actually secure, etc... Do you have anything to hide anyway.

I'm probably just paranoid ha I question using Trello putting "new IP" into it which they say is encrypted at rest so yeah. Gmail too like everything goes through that.

Anyway I'm average intelligence not developing cold fusion or something on my spare time so I don't really have IP anyway.

Here's an idea, a piece of paper and a pencil.

unstatusthequo• 5 years ago

Tresorit? Excellent app, speed, features, and Switzerland zero knowledge encryption. Also supports camera uploads as key feature for mobile.

makach• 5 years ago

What we need is transparent encryption at rest, where only you have the keys.

usrme2• 5 years ago

Thanks for mentioning this! It turns out that that I have an account from 2014 that has 50GB instead of the 20GB offered now in the free tier. To those interested in very basic photo viewing: the Mega apps are more than capable of sorting by the actual date when the photos were taken, which is all that I was really interested in. The web interface doesn't seem to have this at a glance.

legrande• 5 years ago

I have always used Mega[0]. It's real end to end encryption. I would argue it also has a superior user experience across all the others.

I'm still waiting for it to suffer the same fate as MegaUpload. The reputation has the service tarnished. I don't care that everything's encrypted with Mega - They could still sneak in backdoors or skeleton keys. Plus it needs Javascript to work, which is a privacy nightmare.

shuckles4• 5 years ago

You want an end to end encrypted cloud provider like ProtonDrive or Sync.com. You can also consider using rclone or Cryptomator to encrypt data before adding it to a consumer cloud sync solution. All come with the usual caveats (do you really trust Sync.com to withstand a state actor?) and user experience compromises.

jcun41282• 5 years ago

Is there noticeable performance difference/loss of functionality? I did some encrypted text stuff before at rest and remembered to do a basic SQL select you have to decrypt everything (say column) first and then be able to search into it. So there is an added overhead... Maybe it doesn't matter with cloud processing or something.

fraXis• 5 years ago

Sync.com also has zero knowledge end to end encryption:

https://www.sync.com/pdf/sync-privacy-whitepaper.pdf

windthrown• 5 years ago

I similarly use Tresorit (https://tresorit.com/) and share photo albums but these are general cloud storage as opposed to being optimized for viewing photos in a browser.

anonuser123456• 5 years ago

iCloud photos is pretty good. I’d say it has a good balance between security and privacy. Probably best in class.

shuckles4• 5 years ago

Security and privacy usually don’t need to be balanced; they build on each other. Security and privacy versus usability, sure.

simion3143• 5 years ago

Apple implemented a system where they sent to their server on an insecure protocol information that identified what applications you are opening. This shows everyone how much Apple cares or is capable of implementing privacy.

Emails reveal during the Apple vs Epic trial revealed that Apple store apps were infected, then Apple prepared an email for the users to inform them but Timmy decided that informing the users about possible security or privacy problems is bad for PR. We need to keep reminding or informing people about the reality and not the myth of Apple.

Yes I know you use Apple because Google shit is probably worse but Apple shit is still shit, Apple hypocrisy is still hypocrisy and Apple greed is still greed.

darkwizard42• 5 years ago

Have always used Google Photos. Haven't had any issues and its easy to get others to understand.

I realize this does not meet your criteria of privacy conscious but does meet boomer friendly. Sorry

tsjq• 5 years ago

Google Photos has started metering the usage. only 16GB free. will fillup in a year, for most of us with recent phones and camera-autosync-to-GP enabled.

tekkertje• 5 years ago

Yogile[0] has been built with shared albums in mind and doesn't touch your photos other than for rescaling.

[0] https://yogile.com

edoceo• 5 years ago

I've got my family putting photos into a little web-app I made (a few PHP scripts) and it's long-term storage backed in rsync.net.

My "boomer" group have Google devices, so once they auth to my service I can pull their photo albums for import.

holsta• 5 years ago

I have been using (the open source) Syncthing for both personal things and business for many years. You don't need to set up a central server, just share folders via other clients.

If you do, however, set up a server, you can centralize your data and easily run all the backup jobs from it.

ssss11• 5 years ago

I’ve got a synology NAS that comes with a photos app that’s easy to use.

system2• 5 years ago

Same here. I also use their Cloud solution which is in EU. I am skeptical about it though but whatever.

kmos• 5 years ago

I do use Backblaze do store a backup of the Synology Drive which contains de photos and other documents.

jamesholden2• 5 years ago

This was on Ars Technica really recently. I have not used it myself yet:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/foss-mobile-app-stin...

jamesholden2• 5 years ago

They also reference some further alternatives from another article recently, which I also thought had some interesting options:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/the-big-alternatives...

usrme2• 5 years ago

I gave Stingle a cursory try, but I was immediately put off by the fact that it was not even able to retrieve EXIF data from images and use that a basis for sorting. The handful of images I uploaded as a test we're all dated to the date I uploaded them as opposed to when they were actually taken, and there was no way to change that either. There was also no way to view the EXIF data as well.

wodenokoto• 5 years ago

Is it the phone or only iCloud that scans for CSAM?

fretn• 5 years ago

The phone, but only when you have iCloud photos enabled and only when you live in the US

DavideNL• 5 years ago

...for now

dotancohen2• 5 years ago

I get that CSAM is real and is hurtful. So are many other things: slavery, murder, etc etc.

But is the real-world instance of CSAM so high that every photo on every phone that is shared with another human needs to be scanned for it? It seems like there is no tradeoff too big to not be taken in the quest to eradicate CSAM.

Are the resources spent really proportional to the threat?

e12e• 5 years ago

I have not found a good option yet, but next on my list is: https://github.com/photoprism/photoprism

Doesn't look like it's available as a paid service, unfortunately.

reacharavindh• 5 years ago

I am also eagerly waiting for Photoprism to hit stability and add people recognition to mostly move away from iCloud. They have an issue that is being worked on since 2018 to add support for people recognition :-)

Hopefully soon!!

thedanbob• 5 years ago

I’ve been self-hosting this for a few months, it’s really good. I was disappointed at first when I realized it didn’t have native apps, so uploading new photos was a sub-par experience. But then I found the app PhotoSync which has Photoprism integration. Would be nice to have it all in one but I’m happy.

TroisM• 5 years ago

I would be classified as a pedo if my pictures were on iCloud... even if some of the naked kid is me... I also have pictures of my kids playing in the bath.

samrolken2• 5 years ago

Fortunately that’s not how it works. You would have to have a whole collection of known and identified CSAM to be classified as anything at all with the system Apple has announced.

throwawayay02• 5 years ago

No, their AI accepts some deviation. And we don't know how many false positives it takes to start a human review. And for privacy of course different people will evaluate different photos. And a human without context will flag a picture of a kid on the bath as child pornography. It is a very real possibility OP is made a suspect because of this.

square_usual4• 5 years ago

No? The scanner only checks for matches against images in NCMEC's database, so you can take as many pictures of your kids as you want, it won't trip the scanner.

renewiltord• 5 years ago

Considering it's a perceptual hash match, some difference is accepted. Such confidence in the infallibility of these methods usually precedes the method being used to go jail some poor innocent bastard. After all, if he wasn't guilty, it wouldn't have tripped the scanner.

dotancohen2• 5 years ago

Then what precludes the production of _new_ material? I thought that the whole effort was to protect children from future abuse?

dmje• 5 years ago

I like Mylio[0] - it's local only but syncs p2p style across local network. Or obviously you can sync folders with Whatever Online Service you choose, Mega or whatever.

https://mylio.com

tuananh• 5 years ago

Nothing come close to icloud photos for me. Because everyone else is using iphone which make icloud shared photo album the easiest way for old people to interact.

x4j91• 5 years ago

Sync.com

hex-m• 5 years ago

You don't have to "do" Nextcloud yourself if you don't want to. Find a hoster[0] that does the work for you.

The client apps and the user interface are super boomer friendly.

[0] https://nextcloud.com/partners/

lazzurs• 5 years ago

I use Nextcloud and it works great. I do self host and with Docker don't find it all that hard with minimal maintenance.

The iOS client is excellent but to be totally transparent sometimes the app does need to be opened to make sure the photo sync happens.

istingray• 5 years ago

Thanks for the link - I signed up for a free 2 GB Nextcloud with one of their partners. Experimenting with non-iCloud hosted notes now. It's a bumpy ride, lots of room for improvement.

tetek• 5 years ago

just siasky.net or https://skygallery.hns.siasky.net/#/

hdjjhhvvhga3• 5 years ago

Personally I don't trust anything that I don't self-host. With Hetzner I chose full-metal instead of VPS. I pay €40 for 4 TB (2x4 TB mirrored to be precise) shared among a large number of services, including Minecraft servers for kids. The load is very low and the maintenance is a pleasure. Plus I love tinkering with and learning new things, so this part of mine is fully satisfied. I learned with Hetzner that every 3 years or so a hard drive dies but they replace it within half an hour so I just let the RAID rebuild itself and that's all.

technics256• 5 years ago

Was looking to do the same. What software do you use to replace things like dropbox/photos etc?

hdjjhhvvhga3• 5 years ago

Previously I was using various projects for these things like Coquelicot as a WeTransfer alternative but practically speaking Nextcloud is so easy to use (and relatively stable now) that I use it for most things that need to be shared with others:

* it's intuitive to use, so people who haven't seen it can quickly download what you send them without having to log in, being tracked and so on.

* password protection and expiry date for shared links come in handy

* superfast search is a boon for me as I have so many files it's probably the most important aspect

* the photos app in Next/ownCloud is underperforming if you have a large number of photos in a folder - the thumbnails seem to be generated each time I open the folder, it's probably a bug.

* when you need to collaborate, it's supereasy to add users and they intuitively know how to do things as they're used to Dropbox etc.

whalesalad• 5 years ago

Hetzner is cool unless you are in the US. Latency sucks across the Atlantic.

leesalminen• 5 years ago

Depends on what you’re using it for. I set up a Matrix homeserver on a hetzner box in Finland for primarily North American users. Latency hasn’t been a perceptible problem for that.

jonathantf2• 5 years ago

Even in Europe their network isn't particularly good, but I guess you get what you pay for.

lostlogin2• 5 years ago

Thanks. Some nice options. https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver

aprdm• 5 years ago

Do you worry about the data being on Hetzner servers?

aspyct• 5 years ago

Why? It's a perfectly respectable company.

hdjjhhvvhga3• 5 years ago

It is a multi-faceted issue. In general, for really sensitive content, like nude photos, keys etc., I'm very strict they should always be stored in an encrypted form and never ever decrypted on a remote machine.

Other content, private but not sensitive, like holidays photos, can be stored and decrypted remotely and it's a good practice to use encrypted partitions by default. I don't believe Hetzner would do any of the grey things that Google, Facebook and now Apple are doing (i.e. actively scanning your data for advertising and other purposes), but there is a practical problem of broken hard drives - it doesn't matter if it breaks in your place or at a hosting provider, you have a hard drive that is broken but you can't remove your data from easily, but someone else might. I estimate the probability is extremely low, but there is very little downside and effort required to encrypt data partitions nowadays, so I don't see why I shouldn't do that.

As for the interception of data in transit, nowadays everybody is using TLS for everything, so I don't think it's an issue.

alexfromapex• 5 years ago

Synology NAS

wilsonfiifi• 5 years ago

Yep. More precisely Moments [0] which is great for photos and videos. But the Synology app ecosystem as a whole isn't bad at all. Just remember to buy a NAS with an x86 processor so you can also take advantage of docker based apps. I believe the DS220+ is a good device to start with if your budget is around $300.

[0] https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/feature/moments

estevaovix• 5 years ago

pcloud.com

mithusingh32• 5 years ago

NextCloud that runs in my own personal server. Been running it for a few months and I have 0 issues with it.

It may not have the same integration options but it's better than the alternatives.

Jeremy1026• 5 years ago

Nothing, I'll be continuing to use iCloud Photos.

jdgoesmarching• 5 years ago

I will too if we ever get an option for full res shared albums. Such a glaring feature hole atm.

mey• 5 years ago

ArsTechnica did a run down of various options recently.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/the-big-alternatives...

aborsy• 5 years ago

What would be the problem with the old school back up with 3 encrypted USB drives or small SSDs?

One at home, one at office and one on key chain.

Cheap, secure, highly available and offline.

diggernet• 5 years ago

SmugMug.com

sircastor• 5 years ago

I’ve been looking strongly at Plex’s photo support. The images are self hosted, but the service acts like a DDNS, so you can easily get to it. I run our current Plex system off of our NAS, but have been thinking about moving it to a dedicated RasPi.

replwoacause• 5 years ago

Infomaniac kDrive

Ask HN: What are you using to replace shared iCloud Photos albums?

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