Google's New 'Inactive Account' Policy Won't Delete Years of YouTube Videos

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google's new inactive account policy already has people up in arms. The company announced on Tuesday that accounts that have gone unused for two years will be deleted, and a lot of people are asking what exactly this means for YouTube content. There are probably millions of videos out there from dead and inactive YouTube creators -- would Google's new data policy mean deleting nearly two decades of online history?

A day later, Google now says there will be no digital burning of Alexandria. YouTube's creator liaison, Rene Ritchie, clarified on Twitter that Google has "no plans to delete accounts with YT videos." 9to5Google heard the same statement from a Google spokesperson.

That is great news, but that's also very vague and runs contrary to what all of Google's current documentation says, including the blog post. Can people keep a Google account alive forever with a single video? [...] It seems like the company is still figuring this out. "It doesn't make sense to delete old YouTube content," adds Ars' Ron Amadeo. "While inactive data for things like Gmail and Google Photos are nothing but a money pit, YouTube content is available to the public, and Google runs ads on those videos, so those videos make money. If there's no creator to share revenue with, that's even better! Culling old videos would not just damage YouTube as a platform, it would also hurt Google's bottom line."

Who would use new Google services?

[khchung]

Google is already being notorious for perpetual beta and shutting down services. Now, even services that are long out of beta get this culling treatment.

Why would anyone get onboard of new services from Google, when the most likely outcome is to see that service either getting shutdown, or your data in the sevice (after being mined to the bone by Google) getting culled?

Re: Who would use new Google services?

[Bobknobber]

And people wonder how knowledge can still be lost in this day and age.

Re: Who would use new Google services?

[Oryan Quest]

Google: We’ll organize the world’s information.

and then delete it holy smokes this is expensive.

Re:Who would use new Google services?

[AmiMoJo]

This is being driven by security issues. Abandoned accounts are vulnerable. If the password is obtained, say because the same one was used on another website that got hacked, that account can be taken over and used for spam and scams. Because it is abandoned, it's unlikely that the owner will notice or take any action to remedy the situation.

Google isn't releasing the user names associated with these accounts, so nobody will be able to take over their old email address for example.

This is absolutely the right thing to do. Make all the content read only and lock it down.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[coofercat]

You can make a video, and it'll still be listed as being uploaded by "Unscanned", and Google will still make some meagre amount of money from advertising around it. But your gmail account, and indeed your ability to access the video on Youtube will be removed. If you try to open your account again, the name "Unscanned" will be in use, and you'll have to use another name.

Anything "private" that the world in general can't see - all gone. If you want a backup, go ask the NSA.
Anything "public", like your youtub

Re:

[cayenne8]

HMm...I wonder what happens to YouTube accounts Pre-Google purchase?

I have YT accounts that I set up before Google bought them....non-google emails associated with them.

At one point, they kinda forced me to do some sort of quasi-google account for them, but the email goes still to the non-google/gmail accounts.

My YTs are still active....but those accounts don't use gmail, etc....

I wonder if those are in danger of the axe somehow?

Re:

[coofercat]

Probably they'll just be treated the same - that is, if your YT account goes inactive, they'll just stop you from logging on to it again, or from resetting the password etc. You don't have a gmail account to close, so you won't see anything different there - you'll just lose control of your YT content.

Assuming you still use that email address though, I'd imagine they'll send you an email to say "We haven't seen you in a while - log on to keep your account".

Re:

[Random361]

Probably they'll just be treated the same - that is, if your YT account goes inactive, they'll just stop you from logging on to it again, or from resetting the password etc. You don't have a gmail account to close, so you won't see anything different there - you'll just lose control of your YT content.

Assuming you still use that email address though, I'd imagine they'll send you an email to say "We haven't seen you in a while - log on to keep your account".

Sounds like a phispherman's dream. ;)

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[VeryFluffyBunny]

Phew, what a relief. I though I was going to have to re-record all my thousands of hours of rabid, interminable, unhinged rants about commies, liberals, vaccines, gubbermint, illuminati, human rights, people of races & cultures that I don't approve of, etc..

"Deleted"

[sound+vision]

Let's not pretend anything will actually get deleted. Blocked from public access, sure. Put into cold storage, probably. But data is the most valuable thing they have, they will never throw it away voluntarily. "Money pit"? Get out of here. I can think of several government agencies who would want to reserve the right to access that data in the future. Would be handy data sets for training AI as well.

That's just a few uses off the top of my head, imagine what actual data scientists might come up in 20 or 50 years.

Re: "Deleted"

[LindleyF]

No advertiser is going to pay to get their ads shown to inactive users.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

If a user hasn't logged in since 2013 and has an inbox JAMMED full of 15GB of ads for c!a1i5 and vÄagaÅã and also advertising that there are H0t hormy MiLPs in your area looking to meet YOU, and reminders that "your HQTMAIL account has been suspended for suspicious activity, and you should go to HQTMAIL.COM" and login with full SSN & date of birth to unlock... then for them to maintain that 15GB of mostly unread junkmail may cost them a good little bit of cash with no real upside f

Re:

[Oryan Quest]

The NSA is finding there is a point where you hit information overload. Obviously Google and the NSA are both great at indexing and cataloging information so even then they hit a point of diminishing returns.

It’s likely they discovered that information older than a couple of years has a low ROI and is not very useful to its’ clients. I’m sure they’ll regret it later but mostly this is a good thing because Google could morph into an even worse company and they’ll be sitting on

Coincidence?

[Bobknobber]

This coming in during the generative AI craze, where there is so much new content being made (from parts of old ones). Same with Imgur as well.
Guess google et. al want to make room for all the AI-generated spam.

IMAP? POP3? What?

[Random361]

I'm confused as to what they mean by inactive. For example, how many people access their accounts via IMAP or POP3? They're still of value to Google because that email account can still be data mined with new content going in and out. Or are they meaning accounts that haven't been logged in on the web interface in two years? With Google, who really knows?

Re:

[Zumbs]

If you log on using IMAP or POP3, you still contact Googles servers to access your account,right? I would be surprised if IMAP, POP3, the web interface and whatever the gmail app uses under the hood are seen as equivalent in this regard.

Re:

[Arnonyrnous Covvard]

What about forwarding then? What does this even mean: "inactive data for things like Gmail and Google Photos are nothing but a money pit"? Is a photo album "inactive data" if you don't add to it? Is email useless if you don't log in? The concept of storing data to be used later doesn't exist at Google?

Re:

[Xenx]

You have to log in once every two years. Frankly, if you cared about the stored data at all you should check on it periodically. At the very least, to verify you hadn't been compromised. There is no realistic hypothetical reason you, or anyone, can provide that could make this an actual bad move on Google's part.

Official Support Said the Opposite

[dcollins]

I emailed the official support contact to ask about this yesterday, and they explicitly said in highlighted text that they would delete any such YouTube videos.

Received 2023-05-16 @3:05 PM ET:

Thank you for contacting Google Support.

I understand you have a question about specific details of which data and content is permanently deleted if your Google Account is deleted and I am more than happy to help with this today.

If your Google Account is deleted, all data and content are deleted permanently, *that includes, but is not limited to, your uploaded YouTube videos.* For more info, go to the Inactive Google Account Policy in the Help Center. In there you will find an article about How to download your Google data if you wish to save the video before an account deletion.

(Emphasis theirs.)

Read it more closely

[pjt33]

That's not the opposite. There is no contradiction between the claims (a) deleting an account entails deleting its YouTube videos; (b) accounts with YouTube videos will not be auto-deleted in the upcoming cull.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

You're not a programmer, are you? I hope not, because you totally missed a critical if statement in there.

Honour the dead

[sanf780]

Long live TotalBiscuit! The PC Master Race still lives on.

So

[John Smith 2313]

Post youtube poop to preserve your gmail account(s)?

Costs, year, right

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

This all sounds slightly insincere because as far as I understand Google doesn't want to keep inactive profiles data which costs money. Yeah, right, let's wait a bit.

People have been uploading 8K 60fps HDR videos on youtube for years now which is stored at 50Mbps. I.e. 10 minutes of such video is roughly 3.5GB or 1/5 of Google's default storage quota (around 19GB nowadays) for free users. An hour of worthless 8K video means 30 Google accounts near their storage quota limit. And I presume absolute most ina

Re:

[Rockoon]

I would imagine its the technicalss of physical storage here.

Presume that drives are being pulled out of whatever the primary array is and replaced constantly. Each time, an array rebuild needs to take place.

At some point, the array rebuild takes longer than drive failures.

It is at that point that you look for ways to shed data.

Playing Devil's Advocate here....

[bsdetector101]

Why should any company keep your data, info, videos, GM account, etc. after 2 years ( 5 years, any time limit ) on an inactive account ? If it's within their policy, they can do what they want. It's costing them $$$ for the storage cost. If they are still making $$$ off your data, they would probably keep it. If you want your videos, data, etc saved, then you need to make sure that you have it saved on your personal HD's. Like with most software licenses, you don't truly own the software / service ! So

Re:

[Arnonyrnous Covvard]

It's Google's new account policy. They changed it. When people uploaded the videos, they had every right to assume that they did not have to keep logging in to keep their videos available. Google has earned a reputation for abandoning services, but Youtube did not and does not look like it is going that route. It has lots of videos which are useful or entertaining decades after they've been uploaded, and their significance does not depend on their creators' continued activity on the platform. Private photo