What you are describing sounds like two distinct files with the same content. The change only affects the same file that has been "hard linked" into two separate folders. Copies of files are unaffected.

Was this hard-linking only possible when performing an action via the web/app interfaces? Because the wording makes it extremely confusing. Even I thought this was going to affect copies of the same file in multiple places. I don't notice any points in their support doc which tells me otherwise.

I'm not sure how the sync worked. But for your use case I suspect you won't have this problem.

I'm 99% sure that this is talking about "hard links" not "files with the same contents".

Thanks for clarifying and I do think your explanation(s) make sense. Kinda wish it was explicitly stated in the support docs as well.

I definitely see where your confusion is coming from even if I didn't think of that use case initially. It would definitely be a good idea for them to explicitly call out the difference.

There was a keyboard shortcut Shift+Z to add a file to another location (i.e. create a hard-link). Not sure if it still works. The sidebar also has a list of locations that a file is in. Also there are public APIs and documentation for everything.

I see. I think your "hard linked" term is the difference between the "Add shortcut to Drive" and "Make a copy" options when right-clicking a file in the web UI. If this announcement affects only files created with "Add shortcut to Drive," and uploaded files that happen to have the same content as another file aren't automatically turned into shortcuts, then I'm less alarmed by the change.

No, "hard link" here essentially means "folders are really just (tree of) labels", so a single file can be assigned to many folders. All references are shared, and a file is only deleted if you delete it, not merely remove it from a folder (label).

Note that "Add shortcut to Drive" is the new behaviour and new action. It was called something different before. Maybe "Add to folder" or something like that. I believe it was always distinct from the "copy" feature.

Unless it happens on the backend - which is what the article appears to say.

I'm on Linux with Syncdocs for syncing Google Drive so will wait and see how it handles things.