ann-arcana

Queen of Burgers πŸ”

Writer, game designer, engineer, bisexual tranthing, FFXIV addict

OC: Anna Verde - Primal/Excalibur, Empyreum W12 P14

Mare: E6M76HDMVU
. . .



lupi
@lupi

i have literally never heard of this service of theirs, but this doesn't bode well.

I did my Takeout and it was just a bunch of pictures I stored in hangouts.

But i don't trust it to be just that. Google's good at killing things.

email transcription

Hi Lupi,

You’re receiving this email because you’ve viewed Album Archive recently or you may have some content that is visible in Album Archive. Starting on July 19, 2023, Album Archive will no longer be available. We recommend that you use Google Takeout to download a copy of your Album Archive data before then.
Today, Album Archive lets you view and manage album content from some Google products within Album Archive.
However, some content that’s only available in Album Archive will be deleted starting July 19 including

  1. Rare cases like small thumbnail photos and album comments or likes
  2. Some Google Hangouts data from Album Archive
  3. Background images uploaded in the Gmail theme picker prior to 2018
    If you would like to access this data, please make a copy of this data using Google Takeout. After Album Archive is no longer available, you can still use those Google products to view and manage some content directly – learn more.

lilrawk
@lilrawk

The last free, easy to use website builder that actually works is being pulled apart because Google decided they don't like hosting images for free anymore. This deletion of "rare cases of thumbnails" includes my entire online portfolio, website base images, and every single image anyone ever uploaded through Blogger. This isn't small stuff, this is entire websites we're talkin about here.

The old internet is being systematically deleted. Every old how-to website that's only still live because they were built with Blogger is going to be axed.


SamKeeper
@SamKeeper

so on the one hand this doesn't quite seem to be the case--it looks like this was (always?) a bewildering redundant service for blogger and there's still a way of handling images through blogger's specific interface?

but on the other hand it must be said: blogger has been effectively abandonware for years. the last "update" I can think of is when a few years ago they removed the list of tags from post drafts, making it so you now have to start typing for them to appear. besides this obnoxious and workflow hobbling change, and uh I guess maybe making the html draft view a little worse, I can't think of a single update to blogger in... christ I don't know, a decade? also if you got a blogger domain name through blogger itself, i.e. google domains, that's been sold to squarespace, so. I have to think this is at least some sign of where the wind is blowing for blogger itself.

it might be finally time for me to retire the website and build something new of my own.

which is a really cool thing to be thinking about simultaneous with every social media site undergoing rapid junkspacing, and while my hard drive with everything I've done for the last six months is still broken with no way of knowing if the data can be recovered :) cool cool cool


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in reply to @lupi's post:

in reply to @lilrawk's post:

I think Takeout always gives you all your data, whether it’s at risk of imminent deletion or not. It’s Google’s tool for β€œgimme my stuff please”.

That’s not to say you’re wrong about the scope of this though.

The wording is incredibly confusing, but I think what they're saying is that this was an interface to images from a bunch of other apps and also that it had its own images that weren't in other apps? So the ones that are disappearing are the ones that didn't go in there from some other app, like Blogger. Again, their messaging sucks because this is Google though, so I could be wrong.

in reply to @SamKeeper's post:

yeah has been since the beginning lol

the reason it still looks Like That is in part because I've rewritten the css/html/js so many times that it's just pure, unsalvageable spaghetti. credit where it's due, blogger allowed a lot of latitude to just rewrite the site's code (which I misused heavily--I think probably sometime in 2013 I broke whatever thing allows google to put ads on blogger pages, oops)

lol lmao. well if you need someone to help you with migrating over and making a new site, i’m willing to help (although idk how helpful i’d be). i’ve followed storming the ivory tower for like the last two years and i’d love to give back even though i can’t afford to send money on patreon

I have a little bit of experience using Hugo, a static site generator for blogs without a comment section (or using external comment systems like Disqus). If that sounds like something you'd be interested in setting up, hit me up and I can help. Happy to provide hosting too.

they really are just doing to the whole internet what they did to flash huh. burning it to the ground and replacing it with nothing, because their algorithms say its more profitable to scrap it all for parts and invest money in a finance casino premised on infinite expansion of future production than it is to, like, actually produce anything. some real Debord shit