Current Events > 20 years ago: ''be careful what you put on the internet, it'll stay forever!''

(+) Yeah! (+)

Now: I get a 404 error from clicking on an imgur link that's just a few months old.

Also interesting that in the same vein, people put their real name, identity, location, house and other personal details on all the social media things. Like that information is literally just up for grabs and no one seems to think that's a problem.

It's such a stark inverse contrast to the early days of the internet.

Tell that to the Leon Kennedy haircut kid

I hacked Majoras Mask gameshark codes but recently im not even credited anymore.

MEGAsoldier posted...

Tell that to the Leon Kennedy haircut kid

I guess the quote should be changed to "it has the potential to stay on the internet forever" or something? To make it more clarity?

In the past couple years it quickly became very obvious how fragile our internet and its living history is.

Revisited posted...

Now: I get a 404 error from clicking on an imgur link that's just a few months old.

Also interesting that in the same vein, people put their real name, identity, location, house and other personal details on all the social media things. Like that information is literally just up for grabs and no one seems to think that's a problem.

It's such a stark inverse contrast to the early days of the internet.

Porn? They removed it all around that time.

We moved from "the internet is forever, beware!" to "nothing in your life is real unless you immediately share it on social media"

Just takes a war to erase many years of history. If database building is bombed it is gone.

WingsOfGood posted...

Just takes a war to erase many years of history. If database building is bombed it is gone.

While that's certainly true in some cases, serious places have fail-over sites and distributed backups (or more elaborate high-availability and disaster-recovery plans).

tankboy posted...

While that's certainly true in some cases, serious places have fail-over sites and distributed backups (or more elaborate high-availability and disaster-recovery plans).

Correct. Facebook has "server farms" all over the country/world

Revisited posted...

Now: I get a 404 error from clicking on an imgur link that's just a few months old.

Also interesting that in the same vein, people put their real name, identity, location, house and other personal details on all the social media things. Like that information is literally just up for grabs and no one seems to think that's a problem.

It's such a stark inverse contrast to the early days of the internet.

While I totally get where you are coming from by that same token most counties have moved all of their records online so through your local assessor you can look at an address or look up someones name and get what they pay for property taxes, their entire breakdown on their property with photos, everything. Its all public info.

So even if you try to stay relatively private anyone in my town could just input my address into the county assessor website and gets tons of info on me and my property. And I live in bumfuck nowhere in the Midwest, and even we have all of this information streamline and online.

You can learn a lot of info online even if that person themselves never put anything out there. In my state with a name you can pull up someones entire court history if they have ever been to court or issued a ticket/arrested.

You can learn about them through county assessor or DMV if you know where to look. I work at a state college so my exact pay every year is publicly available if they know where to look. You can pretty much track a good chunk of my life over the last 20 years and I have never once put any of that information out there myself.

To be fair all of this information was publicly available before, you just had to actually contact the correct office to get it. Either in person or over the phone. Now you can just use a website.

I regret losing a couple of literotica stories to sites being taken down. Those can be fun to return to sometimes.

The link may be dead but the image still exists forever

Fortunately., and unfortunately, this is bullshit.
]Nihilism, bro.

There are so many obscure YouTube videos I've lost. I've made a habit of downloading videos or music that I worry may disappear.

People don't forget.

Letsago posted...

There are so many obscure YouTube videos I've lost. I've made a habit of downloading videos or music that I worry may disappear.

It's even worse for porn. Most super blurry early 90s videos are lost unless you know the name of the video or performers.

Letsago posted...

There are so many obscure YouTube videos I've lost. I've made a habit of downloading videos or music that I worry may disappear.

There are some lost youtube comedy videos that will forever live rent free in my head.

MEGAsoldier posted...

Tell that to the Leon Kennedy haircut kid

Or the Star Wars kid.

Letsago posted...

There are so many obscure YouTube videos I've lost. I've made a habit of downloading videos or music that I worry may disappear.

I really hate that 20% of my Playlist is just gone, either the video turned private (whatever that means) or was taken down or deleted or the uploader channel in its entirety is gone. All before I got a chance to watch it. It's like "to watch later" doesn't mean anything anymore, sometimes I save things to watch at specific time points to pass the time, eg last month or when I'm waiting at an airport or airplane.

They don't even tell us which videos, that's the worst part. Youtube just puts that message at the top clearly as a taunt.

Revisited posted...

I really hate that 20% of my Playlist is just gone, either the video turned private (whatever that means) or was taken down or deleted or the uploader channel in its entirety is gone. All before I got a chance to watch it. It's like "to watch later" doesn't mean anything anymore, sometimes I save things to watch at specific time points to pass the time, eg last month or when I'm waiting at an airport or airplane.

They don't even tell us which videos, that's the worst part. Youtube just puts that message at the top clearly as a taunt.

A video turning private means the account holder has withdrawn it from public view.

Yeah, I remember those days. I'm glad I never got on social media

I have a playlist of videos I use for lectures and I hate that YouTube doesn't send you an alert when a video goes away. Occasionally I'll try to show something and it's just fucking gone

Letsago posted...

There are so many obscure YouTube videos I've lost. I've made a habit of downloading videos or music that I worry may disappear.

My YouTube favorite playlist is like 18 years old at this point and I know for a fact there's some real classics on there that were deleted and totally lost to time.

toadfan64 posted...

My YouTube favorite playlist is like 18 years old at this point and I know for a fact there's some real classics on there that were deleted and totally lost to time.

Isn't that crazy? Sometimes I wonder if there was a person that actually downloaded and backed up all these videos beforehand which got deleted and is sitting on a treasure trove of internet history.

Revisited posted...

Isn't that crazy? Sometimes I wonder if there was a person that actually downloaded and backed up all these videos beforehand which got deleted and is sitting on a treasure trove of internet history.

There's always somebody out that that saves everything, but whether or not you can find them is another story. It always warms my heart when someone asks "hey, anyone have this old, highly specific, niche meme image?" and one random guy just happens to have been sitting on it for the past 15 years and sees that post. I have a couple now deleted youtube videos, but there's nothing for me to really do with them unless someone asks. They're movie shitposts so they'd probably get instantly claimed or deleted.

This is a real thing and it's called "internet rot"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_rot

or link rot, whatever
>_>

HylianFox posted...

This is a real thing and it's called "internet rot"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_rot

or link rot, whatever
>_>

But its not random right, companies specifically kill the link for whatever reason

That happened when there were a lot less people on the internet. Now that the internet is ubiquitous there are far far more content that if one thing is taken down there are so many more things that people will probably just not care about the thing taken down rather than reupload it. Even relics of the past might eventually be forgotten although original relics tend to have a much longer lifespan as all relics do.

Revisited posted...

Isn't that crazy? Sometimes I wonder if there was a person that actually downloaded and backed up all these videos beforehand which got deleted and is sitting on a treasure trove of internet history.

One of these days I do plan on going through all 4,000+ vids left and downloading the top classic ones.

Revisited posted...

But its not random right, companies specifically kill the link for whatever reason

it might be the site itself closing, or just changing its url structure so old links don't work anymore

it might be a user who originally uploaded the content removing it, it might be removed as part of some moderation effort, it might be removed by a policy to clear out old/inactive content

or it might be other options that are not coming to mind for me right now. None of them are truly "random" but many are unpredictable enough that I don't think the distinction is very meaningful

Some goons on Tumblr went digging through a ten year old post I made on Livejournal once to prove I'm 34 years old, which they seem to think is a W for them somehow.