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Pro tip: screenshot every takedown notice you get, I learned that the hard way with a 2017 tweet archive
Back in 2017 I used to screenshot tweets that got removed and save them in a folder called "gone" on an old laptop. Last month I went back to check that folder for a thread I wanted to compare against a current takedown, and about 40 percent of the images wouldn't load anymore because they were hosted on a free image site that shut down in 2021. I had the filenames but not the actual pictures, so I lost proof of what those removed posts even said. Now I keep everything in two places and name files with the date and platform. Has anyone here had a whole archive go dead on them like that, and what did you switch to?
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annahunt12d ago
Reading this in 2024 and the thing that got me is your laptop itself. My old 2011 MacBook died in 2019 and took a folder of saved forum posts with it because the drive just would not spin up anymore. Nobody talks about the hardware side of archiving, everyone focuses on the host going under but your own machine is just as likely to fail first. Free image hosts die, yes, but so do drives, and cloud services shut down too (RIP to a couple I used). I now keep a cheap external SSD plus a folder I sync to my phone, because two places on the same desk is not really two places.
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