It's that their urgent need to make “big changes” is what weirds me out, just because they look at the [current year] on the calendar and think to themselves, “Oh MY, the future is already here! Maybe I gotta change that business model just to show that we're still keeping up with the times! We must modernize everything!” No, you don't need to do anything. But I guess we're all emotionally and economically driven, copying others' actions, believing it's a good idea to purge data if they have already seen a major website doing it too before. This only further contributes to internet balkanization (splinternet) and distrust towards website owners. At least they could apply this policy ONLY TO newly uploaded content and warn people with a message whenever they want to upload something, instead of burning it all down, decades worth of content. There's some actual hidden gems buried beneath the trash. There should also be methods to decrease the size, using sophisticated filters analyzing huge batches of data, various compression methods suited for different needs, copyright detection, file duplication checking, whatever the fuck can be thrown at it, and why can you not let people just torrent your database instead? I mean, yeah sure, “for privacy reasons” but I don't think that's okay with the way how you're handling data spanning from several years ago, but apparently it's fine to let a new owner take your place that can maintain and pay for it who probably doesn't even give a shit about its legacy and could turn against everyone at any moment? Why do so many platforms and services let this happen? Is there a solution to data degradation (bit rot)? I'm tired of seeing things vanish, stuff made by people who are probably dead today, and I fucking hate whatever we have now, and it can't be taken back.