Get out, now.

  • voluble@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Absolutely. There’s nothing special about YouTube’s frontend - it can be replicated by someone with no coding experience, in an afternoon, for free, via a Softaculous module. On the inside, it’s the Library of Alexandria. And unfortunately, it’s owned by a company that understands that reality only as a means to a nefarious end, which is to develop a detailed psychological profile on its users that can be sold to advertisers.

    My hope is that the cost of server storage and delivery will become inexpensive enough that YouTube can be forked and maintained by a nonprofit like the Wikimedia Foundation, who sees user generated content as a means to the enrichment of human experience. I’m not optimistic though, the history of the Library of Alexandria is instructive.

    • phario@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      There is already something like this via the Wayback Machine (who indeed do copies of video media but more typically VHS and other things) and things like the Russian Library genesis, which is kept in torrent format.

      The problem really is that storage for video media is insane compared to storage of document or even photo data.

      If people here haven’t read into it, it’s incredibly interesting to look into the way the Internet Archive works. In particular you have to begin to concern yourselves with how long it takes for HDs, SSDs, and other media to degrade in time.

      • voluble@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The problem really is that storage for video media is insane compared to storage of document or even photo data.

        Yep, and add to that, 500 hours of video is uploaded to youtube every minute & they serve over 2.5 billion monthly users. The scale really is unfathomable.

        If people here haven’t read into it, it’s incredibly interesting to look into the way the Internet Archive works. In particular you have to begin to concern yourselves with how long it takes for HDs, SSDs, and other media to degrade in time.

        Where can I read more about this? It sounds interesting.

        • phario@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          This wasn’t what I read but this looks excellent.

          https://archive.org/details/jonah-edwards-presentation

          Another super interesting story is about Marion Stokes, who recorded around 71000 cassettes worth of television media from 1975 to 2000s. She houses them in 9 apartments. I need to watch the documentary about her. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Stokes

          I remember I started reading about about this when I wondered what kind of media is “safe” for storage. It sounds like a simple question but it’s not. Digital media, unlike print media, is so easy to lose.

          • voluble@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Thanks for the links, I’ll check them out. Persistence of data seems like an interesting issue.