YouTube as Storage

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Project concept & reactions

  • Tool encodes arbitrary files into video frames using fountain codes, then stores/retrieves them via YouTube uploads/downloads.
  • Many commenters find it clever and nostalgic (compared to cassette/VHS data storage, GmailFS, Flickr-as-storage, qStore, etc.), but most say they would never rely on it for real backups.

Technical feasibility & YouTube compression

  • Multiple people ask how data survives YouTube’s re-encoding and lossy compression; some assume “after compression, all data is lost.”
  • Others infer that redundancy plus error-tolerant coding (fountain codes, QR-like patterns, heavy parity) can make it work, but at very poor efficiency.
  • Several note that it’s likely fragile: future transcoding passes, AI “enhancement,” or changes to codecs/bitrates could silently corrupt data.

YouTube infrastructure, growth, and deletions

  • An anecdote from early YouTube infra: the long tail of unwatched videos was “a drop in the bucket” compared to incoming data, so deleting for space wasn’t needed.
  • Commenters debate whether this still holds with explosive upload growth (including AI-generated “slop”).
  • Some argue storage is still cheap vs revenue; others say Kryder’s Law is ending and one day old, low-value videos will have to be compressed harder or deleted.
  • People point out that videos already disappear for copyright/ToS, government requests, uploader deletions, and abandoned accounts; YouTube’s ToS explicitly bans using it as generic storage, so channels can be wiped at any time.

Ethics, “commons,” and exploitation

  • One side calls this “burden on the commons” and urges developers to pay for storage instead of abusing free platforms.
  • Others reply that YouTube is a profit-driven monopoly, not a true commons, and “siphoning back” value within legal limits is fair.
  • There’s tension between YouTube as corporate ad machine vs. YouTube as a massive cultural archive that should be preserved.

Alternatives and practical backup advice

  • Suggestions: Backblaze B2 + tools like restic/borg, other cloud storage, or cheap tape libraries (LTO) for large archives.
  • Some discuss par2’s limitations at modern scales and error models.
  • A few propose other “parasitic” vectors (Reddit text, other video hosts) but most agree serious backups should use paid, purpose-built storage.