My real worry with Google’s voyage into enshittification (thanks to Cory Doctorow @pluralistic the term) is YouTube.
Through YT, for the past 15 years, the world has basically entrusted Google to be the custodian of pretty much our entire global video archive.
There’s countless hours of archived footage — news reports, political speeches, historical events, documentaries, indie films, academic lectures, conference presentations, rare recordings, concert footage, obscure music — where the best or only copy is now held by Google through YouTube.
So what happens if maintaining that archival footage becomes unprofitable?
@ajsadauskas@pluralistic@technology Youtube is basically my entertainment. I do not have cable or TV of an kind. I am very selective in my viewing. If you appear to be a decent human ie: not racist, not misogynistic, not fascist or nazi I will probably watch anything you have to offer. If you are an asshole I will block you.
@AlexanderKingsbury@ajsadauskas@pluralistic@technology With TransIP in NL there was once a free 1000GB of cloud storage on HDDs when they moved the paid accounts to SSDs.
The agreement was Best effort, but for lost data they were not responsible as there would be no backups, unlike the paid accounts.
Yes, there came a time when a disk crashed in the RAID, and then while rebuilding a 2nd disk crashed…
Yes, bye data.
Apparently some people were upset that their data was lost…
So, >2
@bortzmeyer@ajsadauskas@pluralistic@technology we can’t have one service archive everything, maybe even @internetarchive … But could we make a service/browser plugin to tell if a video is archived already somewhere and propose where to add it? If it’s in French -> INA, and so on…
@Judeet88@ajsadauskas@pluralistic@technology I swear, most any writer or student pre-cloud will tell you this. Always find multiple ways to save the things most important to you.
Can I SHOUT LOUD ( to far too many people still covering their ears ! ) *TOLD YOU SO* ! ACTUALLY IS ALREADY HAPPENING ! … “Oh it’s always going to be on the internet to download when I need it” … NO IT’S NOT !! How many times YT for whatever reason took down something or forbidden you to see in full or … What’s going to happen ? That when they’ll really need money they’ll start say PAY OR WE TAKE ALL DOWN … and content will vanish from YT !
The same thing that’s happened with numerous print newspapers around the world. When they downsize, sack the backroom staff, and move to shopfronts they dump - literally - those priceless collections of photographs, negatives, and, yes, glass plate negatives, as though they were old office furniture.
@Throsby@ajsadauskas@pluralistic@technology old microfilm will get vinegar syndrome if it isn’t stored properly and if it is older acetate microfilm. Eventually it will become unusable. It’s expensive to replace just one reel of microfilm. Old newspaper clippings will all eventually crumble. I believe librarians and archives are the best place to save our history and culture. Unfortunately they are often not well-funded.
Unless the public puts literally billions of dollars into funding and expanding public libraries to catalog all this video media into numerous publicly owned gigantic server farms that maintain the capacity to upgrade digital storage indefinitely, all video media is doomed to stay with privately owned capitalistic multinational corporations that are influenced by foreign governments to censoring various things at will, and all video media is destined to die forgotten and overwritten by future shitty memes and useless influencer garbage.
Should be govt supported online libraries. Not under regular copyright rules (but they aren’t allowed to profit or redistribute it either) but for potentially culturally relevant content that is 5 or more years since publication.
We should all contribute to a global, distributed, federated, and resilient database, keeping a disk at home and (securely!!) sharing it with the world.
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@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology Or Elon Musk takes over?
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology
Curious if you are aware of anyway of downloading one’s content off YouTube for this all but inevitable moment?
@VoxofGod @ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology 4k videodownloader is great for downloading everyones content <3
I use Downie (on Mac) but there’s a video downloader app for every platform. It doesn’t download the ads either 😉
Yt-dl.
Command line tool, works on all desktop OS’s, can handle things in batch, download full playlists, etc.
I believe the current up to date/maintained fork of it is yt-dlp
@ajsadauskas
That’s actually a problem.
There is no backup for this collective memory outside the servers of this company.
@pluralistic @technology
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology Youtube is basically my entertainment. I do not have cable or TV of an kind. I am very selective in my viewing. If you appear to be a decent human ie: not racist, not misogynistic, not fascist or nazi I will probably watch anything you have to offer. If you are an asshole I will block you.
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology
Then we will quickly learn which people were prudent enough to keep backups, and which were not.
#datahoard
@AlexanderKingsbury @ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology With TransIP in NL there was once a free 1000GB of cloud storage on HDDs when they moved the paid accounts to SSDs.
The agreement was Best effort, but for lost data they were not responsible as there would be no backups, unlike the paid accounts.
Yes, there came a time when a disk crashed in the RAID, and then while rebuilding a 2nd disk crashed…
Yes, bye data.
Apparently some people were upset that their data was lost…
So, >2
@AlexanderKingsbury @ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology 2) as they also didn’t have a good feeling at TransIP, they decided to cancel the free storage option.
I just thought “You knew there would be no backup, so lost, was lost… You accepted that. Tough luck!”
@AlexanderKingsbury @ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology
Agreed! It’s an important point of redundancy. If it’s worthy, should be stored and distrubuted even if the most popular way is unavailable (I say)
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology @tsturm Unfortunately, we’re probably going to find out.
Always mirror your content on a few PeerTube sites. When 1 goes down, its your responsibility to re mirror
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology Some of it is saved by public services (for content in french, by INA).
@bortzmeyer @ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology we can’t have one service archive everything, maybe even @internetarchive … But could we make a service/browser plugin to tell if a video is archived already somewhere and propose where to add it? If it’s in French -> INA, and so on…
@bortzmeyer @ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology @internetarchive Maybe there’s some collaboration possible with SearxNG? (I recall writing the INA search addon)
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology This is why it’s important to own one’s own content and only post it to social media, etc., as a secondary copy.
deleted by creator
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=yKNbhMCB_3g
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology Anyone who’s put all their precious eggs in one basket controlled by someone/something else is a fool.
@Judeet88 @ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology I swear, most any writer or student pre-cloud will tell you this. Always find multiple ways to save the things most important to you.
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology
Can I SHOUT LOUD ( to far too many people still covering their ears ! ) *TOLD YOU SO* ! ACTUALLY IS ALREADY HAPPENING ! … “Oh it’s always going to be on the internet to download when I need it” … NO IT’S NOT !! How many times YT for whatever reason took down something or forbidden you to see in full or … What’s going to happen ? That when they’ll really need money they’ll start say PAY OR WE TAKE ALL DOWN … and content will vanish from YT !
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology
The same thing that’s happened with numerous print newspapers around the world. When they downsize, sack the backroom staff, and move to shopfronts they dump - literally - those priceless collections of photographs, negatives, and, yes, glass plate negatives, as though they were old office furniture.
Ask any Dr who fan. The BBC did this as well back in the day…
@Throsby @ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology old microfilm will get vinegar syndrome if it isn’t stored properly and if it is older acetate microfilm. Eventually it will become unusable. It’s expensive to replace just one reel of microfilm. Old newspaper clippings will all eventually crumble. I believe librarians and archives are the best place to save our history and culture. Unfortunately they are often not well-funded.
@Throsby @ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology I wonder how much of this is captured by the local library? There was a time I could check old newspaper content on microfiche.
@kneworldodor @ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology
We do have that. The libraries scrupulously keep copies, but not necessarily physical media.
Unless the public puts literally billions of dollars into funding and expanding public libraries to catalog all this video media into numerous publicly owned gigantic server farms that maintain the capacity to upgrade digital storage indefinitely, all video media is doomed to stay with privately owned capitalistic multinational corporations that are influenced by foreign governments to censoring various things at will, and all video media is destined to die forgotten and overwritten by future shitty memes and useless influencer garbage.
Should be govt supported online libraries. Not under regular copyright rules (but they aren’t allowed to profit or redistribute it either) but for potentially culturally relevant content that is 5 or more years since publication.
@BaroqueInMind @pluralistic @technology @ajsadauskas
We should all contribute to a global, distributed, federated, and resilient database, keeping a disk at home and (securely!!) sharing it with the world.
I wonder if the technology is already there?
#DigitalPreservation #GlobalCooperation
@gvlx @BaroqueInMind @pluralistic @technology @ajsadauskas
One guy is using AltaVista to enable searching for Gopher content.
https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/f91xCT53LZG1GJfk5R
@gvlx it’s https://ipfs.tech/
@BaroqueInMind @pluralistic @technology @ajsadauskas
@gvlx @BaroqueInMind @pluralistic @technology @ajsadauskas The @internetarchive would be happy to accept your donation (I give regularly). Their scope is global, though based in the #UnitedStates, and they’re not affiliated with #government or any #Capitalist #corporation. As well as their continuous #WaybackMachine web scraping they also have #Video and #Text archives plus some niche things like the #CoverArt archive.
https://archive.org/donate
The Internet Archive archives YT videos. I’ve downloaded removed videos from there before.