There are two contrasting facts on the internet. On one hand, every moment we share adds to an ever-growing digital footprint that will seemingly outlast us. On the other, storage isn’t infinite; behind each upload are real-world servers that take space, power, and data sustainability. These two facts will one day converge when those factors reach their limit, and companies will have to choose what to keep. A recent development, and a sign of things to come in this regard, is Instagram’s decision to lower the quality of unpopular videos.
Lowering quality
Instagram’s new policy seems minor; in a nutshell, they will be doing a slight downgrade on less-performing content. On small phone screens, it may even go unnoticed. The head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, described the change as dedicating more CPU and storage for creators that drive more views. He also mentioned that if an old video starts being watched a lot again, they will re-render it with better quality. Besides raising questions about how small creators could grow — to which Mosseri replied that it is a valid concern but it doesn’t matter much in practice — this is also an indicator that keeping all videos at the upload quality starts to be unsustainable.
We’ve already seen how companies are mitigating the future impact with the deletion of inactive accounts. A year ago, YouTube clarified they only intended to delete inactive accounts with no videos on them. But policies could, and will likely, change. Perhaps lowering the quality of data will start being the norm and protect it for a while. However, what if that, too, becomes unsustainable?
Instagram Insight: When your videos are not watched, Instagram will lower its video quality. Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri admitted this last week
This applies to people watching videos on slower internet
So next time your IG video lowers quality, just know it's less popular pic.twitter.com/DqOmwaQonh
— Egline Samoei (@Egline_Samoei) October 30, 2024
Digital death
“Every man has two deaths, when he is buried in the ground and the last time someone says his name“ as Ernest Hemingway put it. Most people who ever lived died both deaths by now, we remember only those recent or popular enough. Today, so much of our life is out there that we’ve forgotten that we can be forgotten. While it sounds poetic that those bits of us are stored somewhere on some server to keep us alive, they won’t.
Tech advancement is a double-edged sword. We still have physical media like photo albums (even if we use them less) and personal storage disks. In addition, there are services that analyze your DNA and help you remember your family tree. There are those dedicated to our digital legacy and assigning the accounts we leave behind. I still stay optimistic that we will find a solution to data sustainability when the time comes. The effort to preserve history is part of human nature.
Photo credit: The feature image is symbolic and has been taken by Mark Angelo Sampan.
Source: Anthony Ha (TechCrunch)
