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Comment by scholia | Hacker News Reader

Why would you want to get your pictures out? If you uploaded them, then you already have the originals. If you uploaded them, watched them get reduced to a very small size, then deleted your originals then you're an idiot.

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.

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Are there no cases where a Twitter client takes a picture and immediately uploads it to Twitpic, without keeping a local copy?

Or those rare cases where people upload it on a device they no longer own.

So, these are people who take photos on device and then dispose of said device without even backing it up or copying their pictures to some form of long term storage?

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.

Sometimes 'dispose of' means 'accidentally drops in a lake'. Accidents happens, and inadequate backups are part of the human condition.

True, but the original photos are not on Twitpic, and they can always right-click and save them from the web interface.

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?

If you have the file then you're uploading a copy, not the original. You're never _moving_ files to Twitpic. That makes no sense.

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.

So, plenty of downvotes from people who presumably don't understand Twitpic and can't actually write a rational fact-based reply. Might as well have stayed on Reddit....

I didn't downvote (the downvoting system on HN sucks), but I wouldn't be surprised why they did - some of your comments weren't really thought through well.

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.

I'd obviously disagree that my comments weren't thought through. They are factual and logical, based on many years of using the system almost every day.

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.

The problem with the downvoting system on HN is that users are actively encouraged by the site staff to downvote posts that they think are bad and don't encourage creating discussion around disagreements if the users think they're worth burying.

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.

Fair enough, though that hasn't been my experience. I've participated in plenty of debates here....

Even getting a compressed/altered version of original photos is better than completely losing them many times.

Absolutely agree.

I didn't downvote, but I can certainly see both perspectives of this argument. They may not make rational sense to you, but they definitely do to other people. Assuming people consume a service one certain way is never a good way to design a product.

I can't speak to exactly why you're being downvoted, but your comments read as very defensive and angry.

My bad, then. But I can't see anything defensive about my original comment, and I'm certainly not angry:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8338469

It's blunt but it's short, accurate and to the point.

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