One day, it will matter. Not even Google can escape the consequences of infinite growth. Kryder's Law is over. We cannot rely on storage getting cheaper faster than we can fill it, and orgs cannot rely on being able to extract more value from data than it costs to store it. Every other org knows this already. The only difference with Google is that they have used their ad cash generator to postpone their reality check moment.

One day, somebody is going to be tasked with deciding what gets deleted. It won't be pretty. Old and unloved video will fade into JPEG noise as the compression ratio gets progressively cranked, until all that remains is a textual prompt designed to feed an AI model that can regenerate a facsimile of the original.

▲ asah 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You can see how Google rolls with how they deleted old Gmail accounts - years of notice, lots of warnings, etc. They finally started deletions recently, and I haven't heard a whimper from anyone (yet).

▲ flux3125 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The problem is that some content creators have already passed away (and others will pass away by then), and their videos will likely be deleted forever.

▲ shevy-java an hour ago | parent | next [-]

That may be, but I assume for videos that had some viewership base, there may be a consideration. E. g. if a video was viewed 20 million times, it may be worth more than one that was viewed only 5 times.

	▲	eMPee584 6 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I've stumbled upon very valuable content with very low view numbers - the algorithms spiral around spectacularity and provocation, not quality or insight.

▲ zaik 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Hopefully the deletion will not affect videos with thousands of views, even if the account is lost.

▲

loloquwowndueo an hour ago | parent [-]

Sweet summer child.

	▲	CuriouslyC an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Goog is 100% not going to delete anything that is driving any advertising at all. The videos are also useful for training AI regardless, so I expect the set of stuff that's deleted will be a VERY small subset. The difference with email is that email can be deduplicated, since it's a broadcast medium, while video is already canonical. I expect rather than deleting stuff, they'll just crank up the compression on storage of videos that are deemed "low value."

▲ dessimus 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Monuments erode away and memories of those enshrined are lost time as well, nothing lasts forever.

▲ bentcorner 28 minutes ago | parent [-]

    I met a user from an antique land
    Who said: Two squares of a clip of video
    Stand in at the end of the search. Near them,
    Lossly compressed, a profile with a pfp, whose smile,
    And vacant eyes, and shock of content baiting,
    Tell that its creator well those passions read
    Which yet survive, stamped on these unclicked things,
    The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
    And on the title these words appear:
    "My name is Ozymandias, Top Youtuber of All Time:
    Look on my works, ye Mighty, and like and subscribe!"
    No other video beside remains. Round the decay
    Of that empty profile, boundless and bare
    The lone and level page stretch far away.

▲ dyauspitr 32 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

It depends. At the rough 2 PB of new data they get a day that’s about 10 sq ft of physical rack space per day. Each data center is like 500,000 sq feet so each data center can hold 120 years of YouTube uploads. They’re not going to have to restrict uploads anytime soon.