as i'm going through and archiving posts one by one, i'm running across some videos that are set to "private". i cannot access these discussions.

this is different than videos that have been deleted or profiles that have been removed. unfortunately, google fucked this up. before it disentangled youtube from google, those posts could be read on google+ - even if the videos had been deleted. now, they've been removed along with the videos.

part of the reason i moved to youtube was because i liked the integration. part of the reason i'm moving out is that the separation makes the platform useless. as these posts come down, the comments will disappear and become unrecoverable. so, what's the point of making them?

examples of destroyed content:

1) i had a long discussion about punk rock on a video for death. this was permanently destroyed when the video was taken down on copyright infringement.
2) i had a long discussion about language on a video for la dispute. destroyed, in a copyright takedown.

so, why would i continue to use the platform when i know the content will eventually be destroyed?

i'm going to put out a public request that the videos set to private are temporarily republished (and i'm informed of it) so that i can get the conversation out. as the page strips down, these posts set to private will reveal themselves as all that is left.

i'm not going to be able to recover any of this.

another thing that's happening repeatedly is that threads that i muted have evaporated altogether.

as a consequence of all of this, i've actually made the decision to refrain from using the comments section at all. google/youtube does not seem to have the slightest interest in developing the platform as a permanent record. to be frank, i'm not sure what the point of having comments is at all if the author is to lose all their content at the whim of somebody else.

once this page is wiped down, i will be commenting entirely on my own site - and those comments will be sent out solely through rss.

please follow my lead on this. let's decentralize...

i'm not going to pretend that i thought the move to google/youtube would be permanent. but, it's absolutely inconceivable - and totally unacceptable - to have entire conversations disappear like this.

i mean, imagine waking up and finding out that half of your facebook profile had just disappeared because of copyright claims. or that all of the tweets that you made about a specific topic have evaporated.

they had a good idea in integrating. it's not up to me to tell them how to run their network, either. but, the way they separated the two products was a disaster.

i would have never moved here if it wasn't for the integration - i want a feed of my comments. and, i gave them some time to work it out. but it's not being fixed. so, i'm out of here.