Seems pretty straightforward. They promise not to look at your data or let anyone else look at it (sans warrant).
But you, mon frère, you and your (allegedly) de-identified info (which analyses have shown isn’t quite so anonymous) is up for grabs: your IP address (which can be cross-referenced with data from elsewhere to identify you), when you log in, the hardware you’re using, credit card type, and metadata about how/much you’re using the service.
Yep, that was my take, too. 
I think that, for these people, zettelkasten is just the new GTD or Deep Work or 7 Habits and Roam (or Obsidian or TiddlyWiki or whatever) is the new cool tool that’s going to make the magic happen.
I think the Roam guys need to think about how they’re going to deal with the backlash, when it happens:.
Maybe, but we are also pretty darn good at blaming ourselves.
I think it goes deeper than that. In this culture that values transaction over interaction, Zettelkasten (and similar systems) offers a path for deeper reflection. Perhaps in reflects an understanding that more is not better as we reach the limits of sustainability and that simply more is not better, perhaps understanding deeper (connecting ideas rather than collecting them) offers a more fulfilling path.
Of course, I also like playing with new and shiny toys too… in case enlightenment lies around the corner. Falling into the rabbit hole of playing with the tools rather than doing the work…
I’m a few days late, but did someone summon a privacy attorney??
Seems pretty good to me, actually, in the scheme of modern privacy policies. Keep in mind that data about use is valuable to VCs (if we assume that is true–I personally do not know) because it’s a proxy for potential recurring revenue. It’s also REALLY hard to parse privacy policies for when data is used to actually improve the service and when it is used for other things. So in Roam’s defense, they are pretty clear about not using your data for marketing to you…
I did that. I like it 
I really like this. It unifies the “note labyrinth” management with a very good daily planner. In fact, if it wasn’t for the following things, I would be paying the $500 for the extra culty plan.
Negatives:
Most of these negatives will go away with time, though… I might end up paying monthly.
I haven’t played with this too much but I believe they just export as Markdown wiki-style links. You can export the whole database as JSON or markdown. Some of the competitors (Amplenote, Obsidian) export the database just fine. I wonder if you just exported the files the links would work in, say, iAWriter.
Obsidian does a decent job of importing markdown from Roam, and has options for converting tags to links, and the like.
Markdown export in Bear or 1Writer would basically work just fine at the note level. Exporting in JSON maintains block level elements, but requires some coding to get all the connects to be replicated elsewhere (it has been done with JavaScript already). The only thing that doesn’t export is diagrams. Kanban and Tables would need to be reconstructed, but it’s possible.
New open-source alternative in VS Code shared on Producthunt today: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/foam
VSC has lots of interesting plugins that scratch the Roam itch (and the Obsidian itch). Really good editor.
I wonder how robust Roam is. Today Ulysses started crashing on my Mac when I selected text, turned out I’d been editing a single 38,000+ word, book-length sheet I’d been using for research. (I subsequently broke the file into six sheets and now everything’s fine, though more annoying to search.)
I have a half-dozen individual sheets that large, and I’m wary of any new product that can handle files this big, especially with the overhead of their unique added links/dependencies.
I’ve seen at least one post on the Roam Slack reporting that Roam became unusably slow handling a very large text. That was some weeks ago, before they’d uprated their infrastructure, so it may be OK now.
Now that’s annoying for an app supposed to handle text like a champion and goes hunting on Scrivener’s turf (which has no such issue). Have you filed a bug report?
Yes. This was one sheet out of several I was working on and it was rather large. Ulysses is optimized for writing books broken into chapters, but several individual sheets were book-length themselves. I was using them for managing and searching research material, which isn’t specifically what it’s designed for. I used to keep files like that as text that I’d access with BBEdit, might go back to that…
I was just going to post about this.
Great implementation and tool. I’m in VS Code everyday so this is perfect for me.
Thanks @JohnAtl for promoting that list .
BTW, I’d to say that the value of that list .
The value of this list is NOT list self.
The value of this list is that "How I do NOT use these tools or LESS use them ? Not how to use them or more use. "
The purpose is not select tool, the purpose is figure out what we don’t need and what we need .
After weeks evaluating a number of options, I’ve adopted Roam. I’m currently undergoing a sort of personal creativity Renaissance, and I attribute part of this new energy and increased output to Roam.
Using a modified version of the Zettelkasten method and Roam, I’m making new connections among concepts I’m interested in … and not just when using Roam. And while backlinks are definitely a powerful feature, I believe Roam’s emphasis on blocks as the individual units of thought (as opposed to Obsidian’s focus on pages) is the feature that changes everything for me, in the same way that Ulysses’s focus on sheets over documents upended my writing process.
I’m sharing what I learn and how it’s impacting my life on my personal site. Meantime: I’d advise setting aside the hype and trying out the software, especially while reading (or reviewing, if you’ve read it before) How to Take Smart Notes by Sonke Ahrens.
I am not a person who uses the phrase “It’s changed my life” lightly, but in this case, it applies. For me, Roam is well worth the $15.00 per month I’m currently paying.
