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xenago

Oof. The end of YouTube as we know it

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> At the moment, Google is not planning to delete accounts with YouTube videos.

https://9to5google.com/2023/05/16/google-account-delete/

A pity their actual announcement says otherwise

This is announcing a change in the policy of which accounts are eligible for deletion. It doesn't mean that every eligible account will be deleted immediately, or even ever. The post says that they're starting with accounts that were only created but literally not used at all.

Only at the moment, YouTube was included as part of the content they're going to delete from accounts as per the VP announcement.

People should use this as a warning to save content they want to keep from YouTube that's particularly old and the account seems abandoned. Just in case Google isn't so lenient with the generous solution; unlinking YouTube accounts but keeping the video up.

I already download any video I find valuable with yt-dlp. So many videos just randomly disappear or are difficult to find again because Google keeps mixing more and more irrelevant suggestions and shorts into search results.

Disk space is cheap, and it can be nice to scroll through the folder now and then and rediscover some great content.

Very true. It really doesn't take much these days!

There's probably other cases of people like me deleting our videos to avoid Google trying to monetize things I don't want ads on.

Most comments will disappear. A disappointment: contrary to the meme, I found them informative and insightful in a broad variety of contexts. And going with them should be the last vestiges of the site's social networking era, unceremoniously, in the way of annotations, video replies, and homepages.

I'll be rolling on the floor laughing the day that Google deletes all the old videos, though. The amount of internet entrusted to Alphabet is just hilarious.

Interesting two weeks. RIP pushshift. Your torrents live on. Congratulations, imgur – photobucket, tinypic, and imageshack would be proud.

How so?

There are many content creators on YouTube who have gone silent or died, two years from now all those videos will be lost like tears in rain.

In this article[0], it says that YouTube accounts with videos won't be deleted:

> At the moment, Google is not planning to delete accounts with YouTube videos. (That would be tricky as some old abandoned clips might have historical relevance.)

[0]: https://9to5google.com/2023/05/16/google-account-delete/

For now.

It feels like a small leap to go from deleting a person's photos, documents, and emails to deleting their videos.

No it doesn't because public videos are designed for public usage. They have comments, are part of recommendations, playlists, and so forth.

Deleting private content and deleting public content are two entirely different things. There's zero reason why the former would imply the latter, and many reasons why it wouldn't.

Which is contradicted by this blog, so who knows what they'll do (answer: the worst possible option at the worst possible time).

Archive everything.

> if a Google Account has not been used or signed into for at least 2 years, we *may* delete the account and its contents

This is what this policy announcement says.

PSA: If you haven't engaged ArchiveTeam to back these up, feel free to. They have the tooling necessary to rapidly rip entire channels (and define a collection for them) for upload to the Internet Archive. Can't count on Youtube to persist or provide open-ish access forever.

Many (most?) classic viral videos from abandoned accounts will be deleted, if this policy comes into effect.

What benefit would Google get from removing popular videos?

Sociopath executives/upper management will get bonuses for "saving money".

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