5 ms·

Are they just supposed to keep the servers and infrastructure which costs them money running forever, no matter how unprofitable?

calpaterson 12y ago
I think the grandparent would argue that they shouldn't solicit user data unless they're prepared to pay reasonable costs of archival
sp332 12y ago
You should tell your users upfront if you're going to delete their data. Something like "Upload your photos, share them with the world, then never see them again after a few years." https://web.archive.org/web/20140810180036/http://www.fotopedia.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20140810180036/http://www.fotope... That one was grabbed by the Archive Team, who gave the data to the Internet Archive so you can still browse it. 2TB of photos, information, discussion, nearly deleted forever. Edit: fixed link
- res0nat0r 12y ago
  According to this post it looks like they were given notice: http://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-final-notice-geocities-is-closing-2009-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-final-notice-geocities-... Generally shutting down a service means you won't have access to it and the data on it anymore.
  - sp332 12y ago
    Having notice is better than not having notice (like the AOL Hometown shutdown). But it's not an excuse. It's not your data. It would be one thing if you literally ran out of money, which Yahoo obviously didn't. And many startups that delete user data are "exiting" or "pivoting" and don't have that excuse either. In addition, you should be transparent with your users if it looks like they might lose their data in the forseeable future.
    - leppr 12y ago
      Maybe it's the users' fault for relying so much on client-server architectures. There are some initiatives for P2P/F2F social networks but they need help.
      - sp332 12y ago
        There we go, blame the user.
      - leppr 12y ago
        People have been using Facebook and complaining when it spills out their info years after Facebook got bad publicity for privacy related offenses. People still get offended and complain when their iOS app gets rejected years after Apple got bad publicity for needlessly censoring apps. People still use tumblr a year after Yahoo bought it and deleted many blogs to clean the site for advertisers, and that after they shut down the previous social network they bought. The users have a choice, despite how annoying those sign-up nags can be. They chose to use services which have reputations anyone can learn about if they care to do so, so yes it's partly their fault.
    - res0nat0r 12y ago
      Most of these comments and similar above sound great on HN, but terrible ideas when you are actually operating a business which is trying to make money. You drop your unprofitable services and move those resources to other areas of your business which will make you money. Google gets heat and does this all the time, and they do it for smart business reasons.
      - sp332 12y ago
        If an unfunded team can grab 9TB of Reader data, and the Internet Archive can host it forever, Google really has no excuse here. https://archive.org/details/archiveteam_greader https://archive.org/details/archiveteam_greader
        res0nat0r 12y ago
- pjc50 12y ago
  https://web.archive.org/reporter/magazine https://web.archive.org/reporter/magazine is ironically a 404.
  - sp332 12y ago
    Oh, thanks. I guess something on the page changes the URL in the address bar after the page loads.
comex 12y ago
It's hard to believe that an archive of sites meant to be consumed on dial-up modems, most abandoned, would today require particularly high bandwidth costs. Yahoo has been faltering for a long time, but it's still worth tens of billions of dollars. So yes, I think they should have kept a (read-only) archive running forever, despite not making any money from it, as an act of good internet citizenship with respect to such a historically important website - or at the very least not have forced the Internet Archive to race to manually crawl as much as possible before the deadline. edit: As a general note, this is IMO one of the fundamental technical deficiencies of the Web today. Keeping website information around shouldn't require active maintenance by the publisher. Imagine if everyone could no longer read the contents of a book once the publisher stopped printing it - what that would do to our access to historical culture? In an era where most users have abundant storage at least by the standards of text, it wouldn't be that hard to invent a protocol where visitors to websites automatically mirror them (the text at least) and mirror them to other clients, forming a decentralized filesystem. Compared to this, the WayBackMachine is an impressive effort, but it's limited by its centralized nature, managed by a single, relatively small non-profit organization.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - comex 12y ago
    My memory has failed me somewhat, but in fact, that link states Archive.Org as one of the "parallel projects", which is the Internet Archive. No?
- pc2g4d 12y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer_web_hosting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer_web_hosting ?

calpaterson 12y ago

I think the grandparent would argue that they shouldn't solicit user data unless they're prepared to pay reasonable costs of archival

sp332 12y ago

You should tell your users upfront if you're going to delete their data. Something like "Upload your photos, share them with the world, then never see them again after a few years." https://web.archive.org/web/20140810180036/http://www.fotopedia.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20140810180036/http://www.fotope... That one was grabbed by the Archive Team, who gave the data to the Internet Archive so you can still browse it. 2TB of photos, information, discussion, nearly deleted forever. Edit: fixed link

res0nat0r 12y ago
According to this post it looks like they were given notice: http://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-final-notice-geocities-is-closing-2009-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-final-notice-geocities-... Generally shutting down a service means you won't have access to it and the data on it anymore.
- sp332 12y ago
  Having notice is better than not having notice (like the AOL Hometown shutdown). But it's not an excuse. It's not your data. It would be one thing if you literally ran out of money, which Yahoo obviously didn't. And many startups that delete user data are "exiting" or "pivoting" and don't have that excuse either. In addition, you should be transparent with your users if it looks like they might lose their data in the forseeable future.
  - leppr 12y ago
    Maybe it's the users' fault for relying so much on client-server architectures. There are some initiatives for P2P/F2F social networks but they need help.
    - sp332 12y ago
      There we go, blame the user.
    - leppr 12y ago
      People have been using Facebook and complaining when it spills out their info years after Facebook got bad publicity for privacy related offenses. People still get offended and complain when their iOS app gets rejected years after Apple got bad publicity for needlessly censoring apps. People still use tumblr a year after Yahoo bought it and deleted many blogs to clean the site for advertisers, and that after they shut down the previous social network they bought. The users have a choice, despite how annoying those sign-up nags can be. They chose to use services which have reputations anyone can learn about if they care to do so, so yes it's partly their fault.
  - res0nat0r 12y ago
    Most of these comments and similar above sound great on HN, but terrible ideas when you are actually operating a business which is trying to make money. You drop your unprofitable services and move those resources to other areas of your business which will make you money. Google gets heat and does this all the time, and they do it for smart business reasons.
    - sp332 12y ago
      If an unfunded team can grab 9TB of Reader data, and the Internet Archive can host it forever, Google really has no excuse here. https://archive.org/details/archiveteam_greader https://archive.org/details/archiveteam_greader
      - res0nat0r 12y ago
pjc50 12y ago
https://web.archive.org/reporter/magazine https://web.archive.org/reporter/magazine is ironically a 404.
- sp332 12y ago
  Oh, thanks. I guess something on the page changes the URL in the address bar after the page loads.

comex 12y ago

It's hard to believe that an archive of sites meant to be consumed on dial-up modems, most abandoned, would today require particularly high bandwidth costs. Yahoo has been faltering for a long time, but it's still worth tens of billions of dollars. So yes, I think they should have kept a (read-only) archive running forever, despite not making any money from it, as an act of good internet citizenship with respect to such a historically important website - or at the very least not have forced the Internet Archive to race to manually crawl as much as possible before the deadline. edit: As a general note, this is IMO one of the fundamental technical deficiencies of the Web today. Keeping website information around shouldn't require active maintenance by the publisher. Imagine if everyone could no longer read the contents of a book once the publisher stopped printing it - what that would do to our access to historical culture? In an era where most users have abundant storage at least by the standards of text, it wouldn't be that hard to invent a protocol where visitors to websites automatically mirror them (the text at least) and mirror them to other clients, forming a decentralized filesystem. Compared to this, the WayBackMachine is an impressive effort, but it's limited by its centralized nature, managed by a single, relatively small non-profit organization.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- comex 12y ago
  My memory has failed me somewhat, but in fact, that link states Archive.Org as one of the "parallel projects", which is the Internet Archive. No?
pc2g4d 12y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer_web_hosting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer_web_hosting ?