Microsoft added quite a few new photo and sharing features to SkyDrive today, and as part of its promotions the company got two members of the SkyDrive engineering team, Omar Shahine and Mona Akmal, to participate in a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) session.
The session yielded a few interesting tidbits about SkyDrive, including word that a rumored music player for the service was in fact not in the works. Another Reddit user asked if Microsoft might want to allow people to upload single files that are larger than 2 GB. The response seems to hint that a large file size option might be in the works:
This is a good one that we"d like to improve on. I can"t comment about specifics here, but it"s something we are looking at. The reason we don"t support 2 GB is that when we designed the system 7 years ago we thought 2 GB was really big. Turns out it"s not.
Another person asked about loosing the current Terms of Service on SkyDrive to allow for the uploads of nude images. Currently the TOS states that SkyDrive forbids uploading images that depict "... nudity of any sort, including full or partial human nudity, or nudity in nonhuman forms such as cartoons, fantasy art or manga." The SkyDrive team said that Microsoft has no interest in what a person uploads to their private files, with the exception of child exploitation which the company has "zero tolerance" for on the service.
However, if SkyDrive users try to share nude images in their files to the public, Microsoft wants to make sure such images are not offensive to the general public. The SkyDrive team states:
So we have mechanisms for people to "Report Abuse" in which case we"ll review the content and ensure it"s not offensive. We also have algorithms that attempt to detect "nude" shared content and disable sharing providing customers with a mechanism to contest that action. This is akin to "virus scanning" in that it"s heuristic and therefore not perfect.
So basically, it"s OK to store nude images on a private SkyDrive folder, with the exception of any that are clearly about the exploitation of children. Another person during the AMA asked if it was fine to store a family album of pictures that had images of the person and his siblings swimming nude as a kid. The SkyDrive team said, "yes. def allowed."
The AMA session also yielded some hints about future features. The SkyDrive team said they have talked about adding a way to tag photos but would not offer any information about if this might be added at some point. The same answer was given when asked about putting in shared folder sync features and increasing the purchasing limit for more space beyond 100 GB.
Source: Reddit | Image via Microsoft