The griefing aspect isn't something I've thought of. I would definitely monetize at that point and ask that he pay his $5. At that point I'm break even.
It's not even Imgur I would suspect of something like that really. There's a lot of money invested into deplatforming certain demographics right now and you might even get people with the wrong mindset or lacking reason deciding what is targeted and what isn't.
Hmm, I guess I don't have a mind for evil so these ideas escape me but you are absolutely right. I don't even think about ways to tear down lefty shit besides competing.
Still if someone did dump 5 terrabytes on me I would count it as a successful social experiment. Yeah that might present a problem but it's not like it will have ruined my day.
So one idea I had to move this jsos project over to data is a abuse maximization concept of business I wanted to toy with. Almost all tech companies go though a million loops to stave off abuse. Once the initial product is made they spend the rest of their product life avoiding abuse.
I started thinking about a buffet. If someone went into your home and just started eating your food you would call it abuse. But if you note who is eating the food and have them pay that's a business.
So the idea is to design it to get as much abuse as possible and simply measure it. Then you only charge people if they pose a significant cost. The problem is what is a significant cost for me (with respect to storage). Seeing as I see no additional costs until the 5TB mark then that point of significant cost would be about the 5TB mark, and by significant cost I mean $5, because they exhausted about $5 in monthly infrastructure that could have been used to serve someone else. So you charge them $5. And if two people would like to do that at the same time they will have to settle for only 2.5TB each and both pay $5. And if three then so on. Until there is an equilibrium. But until someone imposes a marginal cost on me I have no reason to charge or limit anyone, and I legitimately welcome the abuse.
The others have said similar things though. Not trying to be a downer but it seems like there is something else that causes these people to all stop.
For example, I imagine it wouldn't be hard for a big competitor to burn through that 5 terabytes if they wanted to cause you grief. They have millions of dollars to burn to gain more.