Image site Abload going offline reminds me of how much online content we've permanently lost

In a devastating blog post, image-uploading site Abload announced that it would be permanently shutting down its website by June 30, 2024. Abload, which has been around as a free service since 2006, stopped accepting new uploads back in December 2023.

According to the blog post, the team had spent four months trying to keep the site afloat but failed in the end and now its entire contents — legacy images and links alike — are forfeit. What makes this even more tragic is that it’s something that keeps happening as the internet becomes more profit-driven and centralized.

This phenomenon recently occurred with Gliphy, a free site where you could upload and create gifs that could then be shared throughout the internet. Gliphy eventually went under and with it the entire expanse of its years-long collection. Just like that, internet history was erased. Even some of ...