Edit: To clarify:
Is it even possible, financially speaking, to keep adding storage? I mean, advertisements don’t even make a lot of money, is the indefinite growth of server storage even sustainable?
Or will they do what Twitch does with old content and just delete them?
There’s a physical limit to everything (I’m talking more land space here, they can’t just keep adding new drives for infinity), especially since a site like youtube will only get more expensive to run as time goes. I expect them to start deleting content that doesn’t make them money like videos with under 5 views that are over a year old relatively soon especially with the current economy. This would make sense for them and would free up a lot of their storage. Google doesn’t disclose the profit margins of youtube but I am pretty sure they are not very large especially now with 8K HDR videos being available
They’re already wiping inactive google accounts and all related content. It’s going to be problematic for old videos where the owners haven’t used the account in some time.
I have a friend that passed away past the limit, I’m going to need to make sure to archive all of his stuff or else it’ll all fall into the youtube void.
GDPR requires that inactive accounts older than four years be wiped
I got the memo but accounts with YouTube videos seem to be exempt from this. This is good because I uploaded some content a few years back and forgot the passwords.