Last June, fans of Comedy Central – the long-running channel behind beloved programmes such as The Daily Show and South Park – received an unwelcome surprise. Paramount Global, Comedy Central’s parent company, unceremoniously purged the vast repository of video content on the channel’s website, which dated back to the late 1990s.
Every Daily Show episode since Jon Stewart took over as host in 1999? Disappeared. The historic remains of The Colbert Report? Disappeared. Presumably, one hopes, those materials remain archived internally somewhere, but for the general masses, they’re kaput. Instead, the links redirect visitors to Paramount+, a streaming service whose offerings pale in comparison. (The service offers recent seasons of the Daily Show to paying subscribers, but only a fraction of the prior archive.)
Such digital demolitions are becoming routine. For fans and scholars of pop culture, 2024 may go down as the year the internet shrank. Despite the immense archiving capabilities of the internet, we’re living through an age of mass deletion, a moment when entertainment and media corporations see themselves not as custodians of valuable cultural history, once freely available, but as ruthless maximisers of profit. Those of us who believe in the historical value of accessing media from the past are paying the price.
The “internet never forgets” was always bullshit. Just a catch phrase from ppl who don’t understand how it works. It costs money to keep a server serving. Maintenance, support, upgrades, electricity, internet, etc.
Things are removed or lost on the internet all the time. The things you want to go away linger and the things you want to keep are fleeting. You don’t get to choose unless you’re paying. And those that are paying aren’t keeping what you want them to.
Afaik, the phrase is supposed to mean “don’t count on the internet forgetting something you want purged.”
Yeah, I believe that began as a sort of Streisand effect-esque phrase, where if you want the internet to forget, it won’t, but of course other things that most people are not paying any mind to will disappear
Data hoarders/pirates are the reason “internet never forgets”. Who do you think retains those obscure pics/memes/videos?