Everyone has an IPhone in the modern 2020 world. That means a lot more lost content.
A very quietly talked about piece of lost media is the IPhone lost media, which includes various photos, videos, contacts and pdfs that are more or less private to the owners. While most is unreleased, there is a lot of tantalizing media that will never even be known to man. Another item in this category is the lost social media media, which mostly goes unarchived anyway. This can be lost posts and even Live-streaming!
Lost IPhone Media[]
Lost Content[]
While pretty much all of the media is officially unreleased, it can still be considered a tragedy the content lost. Could it be that it is not even worth talking about?
Photos[]
People of the modern world have been known to be able to take lots of photographs without any limit. They can also edit these photos, even saving the finished product as the same file, so recovering the entire process is impossible. Another loss is the trillions of retakes deleted instantaneously because someone blinked, moved or it is moreover just an ugly photo. While it is mostly good that these are lost, as their preservation would just junk up the archives, it is worth mentioning that they did exist at one point, even for a split second.
Videos[]
An increasingly popular media is the video, which is stored as .MOV files on most iPhones. These can be very big, about 10mb per file, maybe even bigger, depending on duration. Seriously, how can IPhones keep this in their bit rate? A new technology has also created “Live” photos, which capture the first 0.10 seconds of movement (if any) before the final photo. These can be saved, yes, but the prosperity of it is almost impossible. Some of these videos are shared with friends and family, while other are more private, personal and even illegal (speaking of FOIP and consent). So it may be a blessing to have these lost.
-Streaming[]
The modern communication motive known as streaming is by definition “instant video”. Preservation of this is slim to none, as once again files are impossibly made big and most meetings are unrecorded. The instant videos come and go like real-time moments. The only other preservation of this is through cognitive memory and screenshots. (Both unreliable).
Preservation[]
It should be said that 90% of these media won’t survive 5 years. People make mistakes. They mass delete. They accidentally delete. They get hacked, phones crash without backup. These photos and videos mainly go missing without even anyone looking at them, thus no point in the first place.
If at all, these files could be backed up into the ICloud Drive, or app, and be available to other devices in their personal collection. So if a phone dies or goes missing, they could log on with another source and see the file. But iCloud storage has gone down in popularity and is often expensive and limited. Computer Hardrives sometimes hold copies, ie. vacation photos or legal documents. But the public preservation of these would mainly be of no interest. (And, being insecure, dangerous.) The only other choice is the outdated Disk or Flashdrive.
Social Media[]
The same thing goes for social media, Many of these conversations and photos are rarely preserved, and accounts can still be hacked or deleted by accident. Some social platforms as Twitter and Instagram have taken down many controversial posts that target minorities and extol minors, being that their expulsion is another blessing. The addition of flagging posts and a new social outlook in the turn of the decade have sparked an increase in posts taken down for “offensive language”. On the same hand, certain third party platforms (Rumble) allow these posts as a way for political activism and websites have forums for conversations, too!
Preservation[]
Again, there is a significant lack of interest in the preservation of these datas and so another 95% is lost at the end. Social Platforms will liquidate or reform. Forums will die if owners of the sites decide to close business. There is no way around it. However, in the event of preservation, posts and photos may be saved through stock imagery or web videos on livestreams. News reports frequently make use of third copies of political tweets, thus preserving them in their archives. That leaves the private, day-to-day communication of the general public to be lost at the end, unless otherwise preserved in a a backup download when their accounts are deleted. In other cases, fanbases use Wayback Machine to archive posts of their interest, but even that is never permanent and reliable….