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Updating our inactive account policies

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Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#61

Post by lakomen »

Eumenes wrote: post #32

This seems pretty reasonable. Google is a for-profit company, hosting your shit, for free, indefinitely, isn't their prerogative. They should offer some one-time fee or small reoccurring charge to keep your stuff in hibernation mode or something. Like literally $1.

Youtube is a defacto time travel machine when it comes to culture as video. You can watch videos from 2004 and earlier. It's the only platform that could allow itself to act against copyright laws. It's part of the cultural heritage of humanity.

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#62

Post by somegent »

lakomen wrote: post #57

... I'm about to explode. I have a very old youtube account which I can't recover, in fact there's 2 of them. They have content on them that I will never be able to reproduce, but I watch it from time to time for nostalgia. This post means that Alphabet will delete old legacy content on a huge scale. The world will be poorer for their culture. It will lose the ability to watch very old youtube videos.

You can download youtube videos

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#63

Post by Eumenes »

lakomen wrote: post #61
Eumenes wrote: post #32

This seems pretty reasonable. Google is a for-profit company, hosting your shit, for free, indefinitely, isn't their prerogative. They should offer some one-time fee or small reoccurring charge to keep your stuff in hibernation mode or something. Like literally $1.

Youtube is a defacto time travel machine when it comes to culture as video. You can watch videos from 2004 and earlier. It's the only platform that could allow itself to act against copyright laws. It's part of the cultural heritage of humanity.

Okay, what does that have to do with Google not maintaining history of the videos you watched? You can still bookmark links, download videos for offline use?

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#64

Post by tuukkah »

skissane wrote: post #47
tuukkah wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, let's profit from their misery and invest some of the proceeds to lobby for policies that secure and further grow this customer segment. /s

You make it sound like the only possible motivation a person might have to start such a business would be to exploit the incarcerated. What if the founder is a former inmate, and says “I wish there was something like that available when I was on the inside?” Even if the business is officially classified as “for-profit”, there’s a big difference between a business seeking a living wage for its founders and employees v…

I know this is HN but the first reaction to a broken system should be to fix it, not build a business on top of it.

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#65

Post by stronglikedan »

vidar wrote: post #41
qingcharles wrote: post #33

I wish I could get into my old Google account. I unexpectedly went to jail for 10 years and when I got out I couldn't log into my account because my 2FA (phone) was gone. I had 10 years of email in there. Would love to find another way to authenticate myself. Looks now like it is all going to be hosed anyway.

Surely there was some buildup to it :)

It's very easy to be arrested, denied bond, be convicted, and serve your time, without ever leaving the jail/prison system. Especially if you're poor.

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#66

Post by sokoloff »

tuukkah wrote: post #64
skissane wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make it sound like the only possible motivation a person might have to start such a business would be to exploit the incarcerated. What if the founder is a former inmate, and says “I wish there was something like that available when I was on the inside?” Even if the business is officially classified as “for-profit”, there’s a big difference between a business seeking a living wage for its founders and employees v…

I know this is HN but the first reaction to a broken system should be to fix it, not build a business on top of it.

You can effect change in May 2023 if you start now on the business. When will you be able to effect change if the only strategy is “fix the whole system”? It won’t be this year and probably not this decade.

Which strategy gives a better outcome for someone incarcerated today?

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#67

Post by neltnerb »

lakomen wrote: post #57

... I'm about to explode. I have a very old youtube account which I can't recover, in fact there's 2 of them. They have content on them that I will never be able to reproduce, but I watch it from time to time for nostalgia. This post means that Alphabet will delete old legacy content on a huge scale. The world will be poorer for their culture. It will lose the ability to watch very old youtube videos.

I only use YouTube through these third party privacy tools.

https://libredirect.github.io/

I noticed that when you access YouTube videos through this you can just right click and download.

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#68

Post by neltnerb »

alpaca128 wrote: post #36
waboremo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only at the moment, YouTube was included as part of the content they're going to delete from accounts as per the VP announcement. People should use this as a warning to save content they want to keep from YouTube that's particularly old and the account seems abandoned. Just in case Google isn't so lenient with the generous solution; unlinking YouTube accounts but keeping the video up.

I already download any video I find valuable with yt-dlp. So many videos just randomly disappear or are difficult to find again because Google keeps mixing more and more irrelevant suggestions and shorts into search results. Disk space is cheap, and it can be nice to scroll through the folder now and then and rediscover some great content.

There's probably other cases of people like me deleting our videos to avoid Google trying to monetize things I don't want ads on.

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#69

Post by skissane »

prophesi wrote: post #60
skissane wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make it sound like the only possible motivation a person might have to start such a business would be to exploit the incarcerated. What if the founder is a former inmate, and says “I wish there was something like that available when I was on the inside?” Even if the business is officially classified as “for-profit”, there’s a big difference between a business seeking a living wage for its founders and employees v…

It's a large nation-wide industry, so I imagine at some point during the business's growth, the founder may be bought out, or the oversight of corporate management lets profit drive the decisions in its various departments.

It is possible if you design the corporate structure right to prevent that. See my other comment about the Scott Trust - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35967694

Re: Updating our inactive account policies

#70

Post by jeffbarr »

I understand the risks of inactive accounts, but as I have pointed out here before these binary policies do not address the all-too-common situation where someone is forgetful and/or incapacitated prior to their death. These people have more important things to think about than their email and their photos,and the transition from alive to dead (to be blunt) can easily take more than two years. By the time that the estate and the executor has control of the account it can easily be too late to save precious memories.
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