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It's so weird how fragile digital history is. When things first became digital I remember sentiments of "things can now be maintained perfectly forever" but tod

It's so weird how fragile digital history is. When things first became digital I remember sentiments of "things can now be maintained perfectly forever" but today it feels like that in 30 years we'll have a better record of 1820 than 2020.

efilife 1y ago
I noticed that people just don't archive things they care about. Stuff like YouTube videos, music, blog articles etc. all get lost because all of those who consume them don't think they can be gone any day. It's always "someone will reupload this" but what if they don't? And they often don't. I started a pretty big archival movement in a smaller community on Soundcloud after I got fed up with artists wiping their accounts constantly (I reuploaded many lost songs I archived over the years). After I showed the way, many copycats started showing up and even artists started giving people time to save their stuff before removing it. Maybe we need to raise awareness about how fragile media really is?
- Telaneo 1y ago
  Even if someone reuploads it, it's usually just another Youtube purge away from being lost again, unless someone goes out of their way to reupload it somewhere else. The datahoarders of the world probably have somewhat decent archives of quite a few youtube channels and such, but since it's not publically availible, and reuploading to youtube or IA isn't really viable, it's lost as far as any of the rest of us are concerned. Doesn't help that video is really big and cumbersome to archive. Audio's a lot smaller and thus easier to keep around. Text is easiest, but there tends to be a lot of it, and archiving one page at a time is usually not worth it in the same way that a video or song might be, so blocking automation is usually a pretty good bet for anyone who really doesn't want their stuff to be archived.
  - Fade_Dance 1y ago
    >The datahoarders of the world probably have somewhat decent archives of quite a few youtube channels and such, but since it's not publically availible, and reuploading to youtube or IA isn't really viable, it's lost as far as any of the rest of us are concerned. We are talking archives, older archival processes were not much better. At best it would arrive in a public information nexus, but be filed away in a dark filing cabinet, not much different than data hoarding. At least data hoarding can interface with the wider internet incredibly easily should there be a desire. Although I would agree that you are right and that there needs to be a better long-term infrastructure for this. I think back to the original peer-to-peer applications and almost think that that loose framework would be an improvement - where different people with files with the same digital signature can serve as mirrors for a reference file through a decentralized network.
    - Telaneo 1y ago
      You're probably right that in the past, things would just be filed away, but then, even if it's a pain to find, there's hopefully an obvious place to find it. Old newspapers got onto microfilm and then into libraries, or were otherwise preserved to some degree by their publishers. Good luck finding someone's archive of a Youtube channel. Sure it probably exists, probably even several copies of it, but unless XxX_PussyDestroyer69_XxX on reddit wrote in a comment that they personally archived that particular channel, you're never going to be able to get in touch with the relevant people to actually get a hold of what you're looking for. I wish peer-to-peer video ended up being more popular than it is, if only to have an obvious place to put those archives people otherwise juat hoard foe themselves, but I have little faith that will happen for as long as Youtube remains the only viable video platform out there for your average Joe.
- croes 1y ago
  Many sites aren't back friendly. The either don't allow downloads or rely so heavily on js and frameworks that the stored files aren't working
  - efilife 1y ago
    This doesn't matter that much. If someone's interested and not very technical it's a matter of googling "X downloader" and pasting the link you want to archive. Learning to use yt-dlp is not that difficult to a layman as well
anon-3988 1y ago
> It's so weird how fragile digital history is. Is it? Its very easy to produce (hence there's too many of them) and they are extremely fragile (bit rot, complicated format that no one knows how to parse etc). Seems to be this is inevitable. I personally think Youtube is going to start pruning their database in the next decade.

efilife 1y ago

I noticed that people just don't archive things they care about. Stuff like YouTube videos, music, blog articles etc. all get lost because all of those who consume them don't think they can be gone any day. It's always "someone will reupload this" but what if they don't? And they often don't. I started a pretty big archival movement in a smaller community on Soundcloud after I got fed up with artists wiping their accounts constantly (I reuploaded many lost songs I archived over the years). After I showed the way, many copycats started showing up and even artists started giving people time to save their stuff before removing it. Maybe we need to raise awareness about how fragile media really is?

Telaneo 1y ago
Even if someone reuploads it, it's usually just another Youtube purge away from being lost again, unless someone goes out of their way to reupload it somewhere else. The datahoarders of the world probably have somewhat decent archives of quite a few youtube channels and such, but since it's not publically availible, and reuploading to youtube or IA isn't really viable, it's lost as far as any of the rest of us are concerned. Doesn't help that video is really big and cumbersome to archive. Audio's a lot smaller and thus easier to keep around. Text is easiest, but there tends to be a lot of it, and archiving one page at a time is usually not worth it in the same way that a video or song might be, so blocking automation is usually a pretty good bet for anyone who really doesn't want their stuff to be archived.
- Fade_Dance 1y ago
  >The datahoarders of the world probably have somewhat decent archives of quite a few youtube channels and such, but since it's not publically availible, and reuploading to youtube or IA isn't really viable, it's lost as far as any of the rest of us are concerned. We are talking archives, older archival processes were not much better. At best it would arrive in a public information nexus, but be filed away in a dark filing cabinet, not much different than data hoarding. At least data hoarding can interface with the wider internet incredibly easily should there be a desire. Although I would agree that you are right and that there needs to be a better long-term infrastructure for this. I think back to the original peer-to-peer applications and almost think that that loose framework would be an improvement - where different people with files with the same digital signature can serve as mirrors for a reference file through a decentralized network.
  - Telaneo 1y ago
    You're probably right that in the past, things would just be filed away, but then, even if it's a pain to find, there's hopefully an obvious place to find it. Old newspapers got onto microfilm and then into libraries, or were otherwise preserved to some degree by their publishers. Good luck finding someone's archive of a Youtube channel. Sure it probably exists, probably even several copies of it, but unless XxX_PussyDestroyer69_XxX on reddit wrote in a comment that they personally archived that particular channel, you're never going to be able to get in touch with the relevant people to actually get a hold of what you're looking for. I wish peer-to-peer video ended up being more popular than it is, if only to have an obvious place to put those archives people otherwise juat hoard foe themselves, but I have little faith that will happen for as long as Youtube remains the only viable video platform out there for your average Joe.
croes 1y ago
Many sites aren't back friendly. The either don't allow downloads or rely so heavily on js and frameworks that the stored files aren't working
- efilife 1y ago
  This doesn't matter that much. If someone's interested and not very technical it's a matter of googling "X downloader" and pasting the link you want to archive. Learning to use yt-dlp is not that difficult to a layman as well

anon-3988 1y ago

> It's so weird how fragile digital history is. Is it? Its very easy to produce (hence there's too many of them) and they are extremely fragile (bit rot, complicated format that no one knows how to parse etc). Seems to be this is inevitable. I personally think Youtube is going to start pruning their database in the next decade.