This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Fortunately, they at least aren't deleting accounts with YouTube videos "at this time"
I still backed up the videos from a deceased friend's channel just in case- but I'm glad his content will still be there.
I see it's normal for me. If an account is inactive, the user perhaps has created another account or not using Google services anymore its money saving if we consider all personal data, ie 15 Gb per user, which are stored and maintained without reason.
The downside is that Google won’t let you keep them active without jumping through hoops
Jumping through hoops?
Merely being logged in while using any of their websites or services any time in the last 3 years is enough to be considered an active account.
Watching a single youtube video or doing 1 Google search or reading a news article or accessing one of those precious files you have saved on their cloud server while logged in once every 3 years is hardly "jumping through hoops".
It won’t allow you to log back in without adding a phone number, even though it had been used during those three years
They’re just trying to get rid of anonymous accounts
So what's the point of such anonymous account? Waiting for 10 more years till policy is changed by some reason or you finally figure out a way how to get a number that's not tied to your name?
I am surprised they did not have such periodical purges in the past.
What happens if someone is in prison for a few years and can't access their email?
This is a good reminder to designate someone access to your accounts if you don't log in after a set amount of time (and now less than 2 years). If you die and someone is relying on you to pay the bills or whatnot, they will need access to that information.
You can also have it set up so that all your data is wiped.
What kind of prison doesn't have a computer that you can use every now and then?
Do you think they have open internet? Gmail?
Looked it up, nope, some shitty pay message bullsit system.
Well, they do have access in Finland, don't know about US
Generally speaking if the question boils down to "will this humanize anyone who isn't white upper class" the answer in the US is going to be "no that's not something we get" (but if you want a worse version of it we'll gladly sell it to you)
The good news, as others said is that Google claims that Youtube channels wont be affected, however I aasume that over time they'l go that rought as more people start to stream in 8k or beyond. At some point they are going to have to delete older content as hosting it all isn't cheap. As big they are Google can only go so far for preservation when they keep boosting streaming video quality options.
Nah, newer content is significantly more costly than older content, specially as Google can simply decide to show ads regardless.
Old YouTube content is what? 480p? 720p at most? They have already re-encoded their entire video library, it's super efficient. The real storage hogs are the modern 4K, 8K, HDR, 60 FPS video files.
the point is.. are they going to rid of old content from an erra that less people remenber or current content that increasingly more people are likely to watch willingly to get ad revenue.
in order to save on costs they are wanting to rid of older content ultamately one year of videos on Youtube can easily save gbs of storage and costs, right now they are starting with gmail but at some point I predict they'l adopt it to Youtube.
Good, fuck Google.
Data harvested. Time to move on.
What timing! I just deleted mine a week ago.
