I know memory is fairly cheap but e.g. there are millions of new videos on youtube everyday, each probably few hundred MBs to few GBs. It all has to take enormous amount of space. Not to mention backups.

    • moon_matter@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      It gets even crazier when you realize they are sort of obligated to keep every video forever. So it will just keep growing indefinitely since they have no way to trim it down. We may eventually reach a point where the majority of the content that they host is older than most living people and the uploader has since passed on.

      • WhoRoger@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        They won’t, eventually they’ll pull a Imgur and start deleting stuff that hasn’t been accessed in a while.

        I mean didn’t they just announce they’ll start deleting inactive accounts?

        But even if not, storage always becomes cheaper with time, so it’s just a matter of copying old data to a newer medium. Eventually that will become an issue, but for now, capacity and storage density keeps growing.

        • moon_matter@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          I mean didn’t they just announce they’ll start deleting inactive accounts?

          They stated they would delete the accounts but that the videos would remain. But obviously the policy could change. My point was more that a ton of people would be watching content that was uploaded by and for people who are no longer alive. Which makes me feel uncomfortable in a way I can’t quite describe. Like a modern version of seeing a ghost.