So I just read The Verge's article on Vimeo had told some of their users that they were using excessive bandwidth and should pay for that, or all the uploaded videos will be deleted.
Popular artist Loish is one of those users who has been determined by Vimeo to be using excessive bandwidth. Loish currently pays US $200/year for the Vimeo Pro plan which allows uploads for 20GB/week -- interestingly, there's no mention of bandwidth limit on their service pricing page.
Loish was shocked. It feels too sudden and it is. Vimeo actually did put out an article talking about bandwidth and cost on 16 Feb 2022. Chances are Vimeo did not alert their users directly in advance. It's deliberate move intent to make their users choose to pay up or leave in a short amount of time, a move to stress people into paying.
Look Vimeo, some of your users may give in to your "ransom" this time, but they will remember it forever (because it's on the bank statement to remind them). Those same users will be looking to bring their businesses elsewhere after this incident.
And here's something creators should learn from the incident. Always have backups for your work, regardless of whether it's art, photos or videos. You really don't want to have all your work archived by a company that can destroy your work due to some quoted terms and condititions. I used to pay Vimeo to host my urban sketching videos as a way to backup the videos online but then I thought of what would happen if the prices were to go up. In the end I stopped using Vimeo instead and invested in my own storage and backup. Thankfully I already have backup then, so I did not have to download any videos from Vimeo. No sweat.
Some of my friends use Vimeo for their art business too. I hope they are not affected. I understand that companies have to make money to survive. But for Vimeo implement a policy that actually will affect people's livelihood in such short notice is in bad taste, and is definitely bad PR.
