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Myspace just 'accidentally' lost most of it's data. Much like G+ it's one of those sites no one used anymore, except for the people who do. When I was looking into SEO and social media market share about two years ago MySpace still had a pretty big share.
Ever since Nipplegate I've been saying that Tumblr is looking to shed most of it's data. It wants to slim down it's databases for cheaper and easier upkeep. I've had people tell me very strongly the Tumblr would not do that, but I'd bet at least half of those naysayers are less sure of themselves now. While Tumblr is still way above MySpace in traffic, to a lot of people in social media, new media and the arts Tumblr has been viewed much like MySpace for years. Big in it's day, but that day is over.
The hosts and guests on the photography podcasts I listen to, who often know more than they can say about certain things, have been saying that the upheaval in content hosting of the past few years is just getting the market ready for even larger upheavals. Certain companies are looking to aggressively monetize content hosting. All the upheaval with Flickr, Photobucket, 500px, etc are just the opening moves readying things for much bigger plays.
This is a bit of a problem for fandom. I put stuff online as early as 2001 on what I thought was stable hosting. I had a paid photobucket account for about a decade to prevent link rot. I think it cost me like $2.16 with tax a month. Rehosting art and other content is bad. But content that was put on stable hosts, in some cases sites meant to be fandom archives, is going poof. AO3 is now riddled with Photobucket ads and broken links on fic with 'covers' and illustrations. Soundcloud, the workhorse of audio hosting, nearly shut down twice in the past couple of of years. According to the twitter of the dude what runs The Internet Archive, older soundcloud uploads are being resaved at lower quality.
This is something fandom is going to have to think about going forward more and more. Do we let everything just be lost, or do we try to find a way to archive things? For fic we have AO3 but it can't and shouldn't take on other projects. Also, a lot of stuff never made it to AO3. I am in Wodehouse fandom and when it was active back in 2009 a lot of people weren't sure about that new ambitious project by that one LJ user. Heck, I couldn't even get an AO3 invite code for a long time. Ideally, content creators should leave some sort of guidelines for future archiving of their work. Some of that work was meant to be permanently available, but the internet changed. It needs rehosting or it's gone. Ideally, people who save things to their local drives should note the username, platform and posting date in the file name as that could be super important later on.
Just to be super clear, I am not advocating rehosting or reposting of fan works. I don't allow reposting in any community space that I run. I am just pointing out the situation we are in. And that the Magic 8 Ball says that this is nothing compared to the content loss and link rot we'll see over the next 3 years.
Ever since Nipplegate I've been saying that Tumblr is looking to shed most of it's data. It wants to slim down it's databases for cheaper and easier upkeep. I've had people tell me very strongly the Tumblr would not do that, but I'd bet at least half of those naysayers are less sure of themselves now. While Tumblr is still way above MySpace in traffic, to a lot of people in social media, new media and the arts Tumblr has been viewed much like MySpace for years. Big in it's day, but that day is over.
The hosts and guests on the photography podcasts I listen to, who often know more than they can say about certain things, have been saying that the upheaval in content hosting of the past few years is just getting the market ready for even larger upheavals. Certain companies are looking to aggressively monetize content hosting. All the upheaval with Flickr, Photobucket, 500px, etc are just the opening moves readying things for much bigger plays.
This is a bit of a problem for fandom. I put stuff online as early as 2001 on what I thought was stable hosting. I had a paid photobucket account for about a decade to prevent link rot. I think it cost me like $2.16 with tax a month. Rehosting art and other content is bad. But content that was put on stable hosts, in some cases sites meant to be fandom archives, is going poof. AO3 is now riddled with Photobucket ads and broken links on fic with 'covers' and illustrations. Soundcloud, the workhorse of audio hosting, nearly shut down twice in the past couple of of years. According to the twitter of the dude what runs The Internet Archive, older soundcloud uploads are being resaved at lower quality.
This is something fandom is going to have to think about going forward more and more. Do we let everything just be lost, or do we try to find a way to archive things? For fic we have AO3 but it can't and shouldn't take on other projects. Also, a lot of stuff never made it to AO3. I am in Wodehouse fandom and when it was active back in 2009 a lot of people weren't sure about that new ambitious project by that one LJ user. Heck, I couldn't even get an AO3 invite code for a long time. Ideally, content creators should leave some sort of guidelines for future archiving of their work. Some of that work was meant to be permanently available, but the internet changed. It needs rehosting or it's gone. Ideally, people who save things to their local drives should note the username, platform and posting date in the file name as that could be super important later on.
Just to be super clear, I am not advocating rehosting or reposting of fan works. I don't allow reposting in any community space that I run. I am just pointing out the situation we are in. And that the Magic 8 Ball says that this is nothing compared to the content loss and link rot we'll see over the next 3 years.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-20 07:59 am (UTC)From:Also, may I link to this post?
no subject
Date: 2019-03-20 08:04 am (UTC)From:So many people assume server/cloud space is cheap, easy and immutable. It's really not. AO3's budgets for server space are huge and they are just serving up text.
no subject
Date: 2019-04-01 04:34 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2019-04-01 04:50 am (UTC)From:Ideally, people would stick relevant info in metadata, but if most hosts strip it, it can't even be seen.
no subject
Date: 2019-04-06 09:18 pm (UTC)From: