The same thing happened with film reels and will occur with any art or data that isn’t properly preserved. People heard “The Internet is forever” and assumed that everything would be stored digitally forever.
I’ve been emphasizing this for years, but few people seem to take it seriously. All data, regardless of format, needs to be curated, which is both costly and time-consuming.
Eventually, Facebook will cease transferring your profile data to new storage devices, and it will disappear. It won’t take centuries after you stop using it—likely just decades or, more probably, years.
The idea that “the Internet is forever” is completely untrue for videos. YouTube removes videos regularly, and no one is backing up everything; even videos with tens of thousands of views often disappear without a trace.
And they didn’t transfer them to newer HDDs or SSDs.
They’d be better off using long-term archival storage like tape instead of shifting the problem from one short-term medium to another.