From their website: The Gfycat service is being discontinued. Please save or delete your Gfycat content by visiting https://www.gfycat.com and logging in to your account. After September 1, 2023, all Gfycat content and data will be deleted from gfycat.com.
This has been a strange year.
Man, this really isn’t a good year for the internet
Or it could be a really fucking great year. It could mark the end of commercialised social media and the beginnings of truly widespread adoption of free and open alternatives.
While this year has been painful for the data preservationist part of me, I also couldn’t be more excited for the rise of the small web and open platforms.
Yeah all that information disappearing is a huge disappointment.
But realistically while Reddit Inc own that data it was always going to happen eventually. If it wasn’t the demand from LLMs pushing them to lock it away so they can monetise it, it’d have been a move like Twitter blocking non logged in users, or just them purging old data to save money or something.
I keep saying that it’s like losing a shitty Library of Alexandria.
I appreciate your optimistic view on the situation. I really hope Lemmy will one day reach the same level of popularity as Reddit.
I hope it will remain a bit more niche, but yeah.
You gave a hopeless soul some hope today. Thank you.
Just wait until the “targeted ad” bubble pops because people realize it’s all a fraudulently inflated market with little to no true value.
There will be wailing, and gnashing of teeth.
Entirely speculation, but I think this might be why some of the dominoes are already falling?
Like maybe all the ads pulled out of Twitter and saw that it didn’t impact the ad companies very much?
If so, it could be the true end to Web 2.0
Or maybe the best year?
For corporate globohomo internet. Never let a crisis go to waste