"I cant get something? I will make sure no one can!"
Twitpic is not and never has been a photo storage service. It was/is a service for adding pics to tweets. That's all.
It doesn't make any sense to move them to another provider: the Twitpic addresses are already included in the tweets and Twitter isn't going to change those to different URLs.
Since Twitpic's purpose was to post photos inline at Twitter, what proportion of their photos have they probably lost?
Given that they can't even cope with the idea of copying their pics off this old device, what are the odds that they can cope with the idea of downloading an archive from Twitpic?
I'm all in favor of companies letting you take your data out of any service you've used, on principle, but frankly, this scenario doesn't make a lot of sense.
Anyway, that's an extreme case, and web services are typically not set up to deal with extreme (in fact, totally hypothetical) cases.
I still haven't seen anybody put up a rational counter-argument. Does that mean nobody can?
It also wouldn't be smart because, as regular users quickly discovered, Twitpic's system often didn't work so you had to upload the same pic again. And again.
Then there's the fact that -- very, very obviously -- if you upload a 4000 x 3000 photo, Twitpic reduces it to the sort of tiny size that fits into a tweet. (Twitter does the same.)
I used Twitpic daily for many years, and I know it very well. The only thing that would be worth retrieving is the hit-counts for various pics, some of which went over 20,000. However, it's hardly a big deal if I lose those numbers. They're not of any practical value.
For example, not being able to imagine people wanting to save pictures from the service - people can lose their local copies from device/hard drive failure, or lost cellphones, and the digital copies are the only ones that remain. I can attest that this has happened to me.
Anyone who has a different view of the facts could present a counter-argument, but really, no one has.
people can lose their local copies from device/hard drive failure, or lost cellphones
Yes, this is true. But as I pointed out, Twitpic is not and never has been a storage service, and it does not keep original photos. The business was set up to post pics to Twitter, not to cater for the very small number of people who might have suffered in this way.
That said, all those photos are STILL AVAILABLE ON TWITPIC and can easily be saved from its pages. A simple browser extension would even download several of them at a time.
The only counter argument, as far as I can see, is that Twitpic should have been set up to provide a different type of service, perhaps called Storepic or whatever. But it wasn't. No amount of downvoting hides the fact that some people are simply failing to understand this simple truth.
I should also mention, I made no mention of using Twitpic as a storage service. Even getting a compressed/altered version of original photos is better than completely losing them many times.
Even getting a compressed/altered version of original photos is better than completely losing them many times.
Absolutely agree.
I can't speak to exactly why you're being downvoted, but your comments read as very defensive and angry.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8338469
It's blunt but it's short, accurate and to the point.