Myspace has admitted to losing the files users uploaded to the site between 2002 and 2015. Which equates to millions of audio files, as well as countless photos and videos. Which should serve as a good reminder not to use social media sites as your sole backups.
As detailed in this Reddit thread, in February 2018, users started complaining they were having trouble playing music on Myspace. The social media site acknowledged the issue, but promised it was working on a fix. That fix never arrived, and now we now why…
Myspace Admits Losing 12 Years of Files
The scale of the problem first came to light when a Reddit user complained to the site. Myspace responded with, “Due to a server migration files were corrupted and unable to be transferred over to our updated site. There is no way to recover the lost data”.
There’s now a message at the top of the homepage saying, “As a result of a server migration project, any photos, videos, and audio files you uploaded more than three years ago may no longer be available on or from Myspace. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
I'm deeply skeptical this was an accident. Flagrant incompetence may be bad PR, but it still sounds better than "we can't be bothered with the effort and cost of migrating and hosting 50 million old MP3s."
— Andy Baio (@waxpancake) March 18, 2019
With Myspace launching in 2003, this means that the site has lost 12 years worth of uploaded files. And there seems to be no way of recovering them. Which is a disaster for anyone who was using Myspace as a backup for their files.
This may seem unlikely, but Myspace was once an important breeding ground for new artists. And while most will have had the foresight to keep backups, there are reports that some musicians have lost all of their old material in this incident.
Don’t Use Social Media Sites as Backups
As you can see in the tweet above from former Kickstarter CTO Andy Baio, not everyone believes this was an accident. After all, storing millions of files costs money, and Myspace isn’t exactly raking in the dollars right now.
Whether it was an accident or not, this is a good reminder not to use social media sites as backups for files. Today, it’s Myspace, but tomorrow it could be Facebook, Twitter, or any of the other social media sites you’re trusting with your files.
Image Credit: Robyn Jay/Flickr
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