14 DAY TRIAL // Just yesterday, Dropbox made a slew of announcements, ranging from new apps and new features to new execs and a new board member – Condoleezza Rice.
The Internet reacted quickly and the threats came pouring in from people who were not happy with the choice, demanding that she be removed from the board or they stopped using Dropbox.
The threats seem quite similar to those made by Firefox users after Mozilla named Eich, a supporter of an anti-gay marriage bill, as CEO. Eich eventually stepped down and the organization is still looking for a new leader.
By comparison, however, Rice’s list of wrongdoings is considerably lengthier. A new site titled “Drop Dropbox” expresses the concerns regarding the naming.
Basically, people don’t want Rice’s name associated with Dropbox because of a series of issues she’s been involved in. At the top of the list is the fact that she helped start the Iraq war back when she was the National Security Advisor of George Bush and was also involved in the creation of the torture program launched by the Administration.
Given the nature of Dropbox’s area of activity, the fact that Rice supports warrantless wiretaps, and has even authorized several on the UN Security Council members, is most concerning.
Considering the fact that the topic of warrantless surveillance has come up more times than we can count since the NSA scandal broke last summer, and how much information has come out regarding the intelligence agency, it’s quite easy to understand the concerns of the supporters of “Drop Dropbox.”
The site urges everyone who feels the same to tell Drew Houston to remove Condoleezza Rice from the Dropbox Board or they’ll stop using Dropbox and move to an alternative cloud storage provider.
To make it clear that they’re not messing around, there’s also a list of alternatives to Dropbox, including Box, OneDrive, SpiderOak and Google Drive.
Twitter users were quick to react. #DropDropbox became an instant hit and there are thousands of messages using the hashtag from people who are considering making the final step unless there’s a response from the company.
So far, Dropbox has stayed quiet on the topic, but we’re likely to hear something about this soon.
As in the case of Mozilla, this is a really bad public relations moment and users will not be happy unless Rice is removed from her brand new position.