FediThing has moved!

Reminder that whatever you store on an internet site will one day vanish, even if it's stored on the largest and richest site in the world:

"Myspace, the once mighty social network, has lost every single piece of content uploaded to its site before 2016, including millions of songs, photos and videos with no other home on the internet."

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/mar/18/myspace-loses-all-content-uploaded-before-2016

Please don't rely on internet services to exist forever, they will all disappear eventually.

Try to store copies of important stuff offline if you can. Music, video, photos etc can all be stored locally.

Myspace loses all content uploaded before 2016

Faulty server migration blamed for mass deletion of songs, photos and video

The Guardian
Feb 5, 2023 at 9:55amWeb
Show threadMagicLike 🏳️‍🌈Feb 5, 2023
@FediThing Everything I store online has at least one local copy 👍
Show threadLuna Dragofelis ΘΔ moved to @[email protected]Feb 5, 2023
@FediThing With regards to backups, redundancy is an advantage. Ideally one keeps them both encrypted in the cloud *and* offline.
Show threadOldBrushNewPaperFeb 5, 2023

@FediThing Shorter: "Own your media."

But, yeah, all this seems to need spelling out, in a way that some might have thought unnecessary... in 1995.

Show threadjackson&  Feb 5, 2023
@FediThing checking archiveteam wiki (https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Myspace), they didn't manage to save anything because no one was told beforehand before the data was deleted.
Myspace - Archiveteam

Show threadCarlos RodríguezFeb 5, 2023
@FediThing Also there won’t be any information after the heat death of the universe so, don’t stress about it.
Show threadThe Skeptic's Book of ListsFeb 5, 2023
@FediThing back up everything to floppy disk!
Show threadRev. Watt deFalk, O.C.D.Feb 5, 2023
@FediThing Good advice, & I'm as prone as anyone else to not bother memorizing anything cuz I can find it all on my addictive little Mastermind "phone."
But when major disaster strikes (or the big Off-button is pressed at last), how many of our personalities will be severely crippled cuz our brains are too shocked & flabby to recall much of anything? But don't worry, here come the trucks to take us to Camp Drumpf.
Write the most important stuff in a waterproof notebook & keep it always handy.
Show threadkcǃFeb 5, 2023
@FediThing exactly why I still prefer owning music vs streaming. Among other reasons, I have many favorite albums that just don’t exist online anymore.
Show thread\\Feb 5, 2023
@FediThing on the one hand this is a mercy. on the other, so many obscure indie band tracks that have just vanished forever. I still have an EP from Wesafari that was released free on myspace, and there’s no other way I know of to have gotten it.
Show threadSteve MannFeb 5, 2023
@FediThing My Space is a piece of crap in any case.
Show threadDavidFeb 5, 2023
@FediThing Should have done an on premise to AWS migration.
Show threadIn Search of a Better WorldFeb 5, 2023
@FediThing To be fair, my own brain does that on a pretty much daily... what were we talking about again?
Show threadfedericoFeb 5, 2023
@FediThing and ironically if people want to exercise the right to be forgotten there is also no guarantee that their data will be deleted.
Show threadAdam Shostack  Feb 5, 2023
@FediThing this, of course, implies that there was content being uploaded to MySpace after 2016!
Show threadMartinBoormanFeb 5, 2023
@FediThing more if a shock anything on there after 2016
Show threadKoschFeb 5, 2023

@FediThing
Well, I too, shall one day vanish…as I get older I worry about such things less 😆

(But that doesn’t mean I don’t back up my shit 😎)

Show threadTheRed&BlackOneFeb 5, 2023
@FediThing This is one of those things that I wished would be solved with some of these storage cryptos. I guess we'll see if they do.
Show threadMatěj Cepl 🇪🇺 🇨🇿 🇺🇦Feb 5, 2023
@FediThing Just read https://lwn.net/Articles/921787/ … expecting that years down the line the file will be in same URL with same binary content is just loony.
Show threadTim MacintaFeb 5, 2023
@FediThing - I'll add another suggestion to all the others in the comments: run periodic integrity checks. All hardware & media will fail eventually, and you might be relying on a backup copy that is corrupted. I have a list of hashes for my photos & videos and use a script to check them weekly. I've actually caught needle-in-a-haystack errors on hardware that appeared to be working fine.
Show threadEssjay 🏳️‍🌈  Feb 5, 2023

@FediThing

As a retired DBA, I will say:

"Off-server backups are essential".

That's all.

Show threadEssjay 🏳️‍🌈  Feb 5, 2023

@FediThing

Oh and unless you can recover from the backup you took, you are wasting your time.

Test that your backup is capable of recovery.
Regularly.

Show threadMR.CleymoxxFeb 5, 2023

@FediThing Thank GOD i got about 2000English- British Movies stored on HARDDRIVE- and about 200 animated - and a hell lot of good series and foreing film...

AND we're not talking; "50-Cent The Movie" - mostly things before 2010 and most from 90s, 80s and early 2000..

Show threadPaul WeatherallFeb 5, 2023
@FediThing Support https://archive.org/
Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Texts, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine

Show threadJohnFeb 5, 2023

@FediThing Remember the 3-2-1 rule for backups:
Three backups - an original backup and two copies
Two backups mediums - Note SSDs may not retain data if they aren’t periodically powered up
One backup offsite - This is the “what about a fire/flood/tornado?” scenario. Your next door neighbor is probably not the best place for this. If this is hosted online, ask if the host encrypts your data and whether they also have access to your encryption key(s).

And periodically test the recovery process!

Show threadArena Cops 🇺🇦✌Feb 5, 2023
@FediThing Spoiler alert: No storage medium survives eternally.
Show threadニルス・スキニールFeb 5, 2023
@FediThing
It'll get worse with reliance on the cloud.
Show threadFrederico SarmentoFeb 5, 2023
@FediThing even the songs we have in our playlists in Spotify isn't secure. These days I played one of them and, for my surprise, some of the songs were anavailable due to non-renewal of contracts. So, commercial interests can also destroy content.
Show threadFediThing has moved!Feb 6, 2023

@fredsarm

Yes, Spotify and streaming is HORRIBLE for music collections. They will without warning remove stuff, or even worse replace stuff and act as though nothing happened. You'll be listening to a playlist and it's some crappy version of a song you love.

Show threadHeatherFeb 5, 2023
@FediThing Yep, I remember when Yahoo Photos was shut down and I had to scramble to get my photos backed up. I've had gmail since the beginning, and Google Photos for years. Google is now charging me a few dollars a month to hold onto my data. You bet I've got my stuff backed up onto an external hard drive these days. I was an early adopter of digital photography. When I think of all the things I've lost over the years...
Show threadbkFeb 5, 2023
@FediThing Sandpaintings…
Show threadDavid W. JonesFeb 6, 2023
@FediThing Always keep originals of your work on your local computer; use a good, reliable and *tested* local backup process; only post copies online. *Your data is infinitely more important to you than it is to any online service, including cloud storage.*
Show threadKKFeb 6, 2023
@FediThing this is good news to me. 😂
Show threadSimon I Groove musicallyFeb 6, 2023

@FediThing Sometimes I refer to myself as an Independent Librarian. Every digital media I have starts out physical, then losslessly ripped and archived on a solid storage server. The physical medium then gets distributed to my local friends or community library systems for continuous borrowing.

Yeah, I'll get tagged for it someday. Piracy, they'll say. I say it takes one to know one.

Show threadFediThing has moved!Feb 8, 2023

@groovemd

It used to be that people who could afford it would keep a personal library. Wealthier people had an entire room devoted to it in their homes (as still seen on Cluedo boards).

Now we're being prevented from doing this even if we want to, through streaming-only and DRM-only publications, plus ever-increasing terms of copyright that keep works out of the public domain.

It really doesn't bode well for preservation :/

Pirates are going to end up being the only sources of long term archive works that are no longer on subscription services.

Show threadJanisFeb 7, 2023

@FediThing It's also a good idea to keep copies of the software that can read it, and an OS that can run the software, or at least keep your config so you can read your files. I have some really lovely *.swf files....

It will all disappear eventually. Purpose is everything.

Show threadFediThing has moved!Feb 7, 2023

@janisf

All things must pass.

Show threadMrs Mouse at workFeb 7, 2023
@FediThing
SourceForge[t] did the same thing. the 3-2-1 rule for backups isn't "Put it on the cloud somewhere"
Show threadShiny Amygdala, ph.DFeb 10, 2023
@FediThing is it true that all of it still exists as signals in space? Someone told me that before, and I couldn't find anything about that on Google search, not that I expect the search engine to have the answers, but...
Show threadFediThing has moved!Feb 10, 2023

@ShinyAmygdala

Radio and TV transmissions theoretically still exist out in space, though they get weaker as they move onward.

But I don't think that applies to computer databases?

Show thread🧷💜Raven✨of🏴Justice•{🚫⚖️🚫🏳️}Apr 26, 2023
@FediThing Yup. Plus, once global thermo-nuclear war hits, ISPs and data centers are going to be one of the first things hit with EMPs.
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Control the story, control minds. Destroy the story, you get to write it.