Hi, i use tubearchivist a lot. My usecases:

- I follow several video essasist types whose content has been removed for various reasons- reviews of media Claimed, hit with ‘inappropriate content’ (spuriously, usually). In two cases, there are creators who removed a lot of their older content for reasons that I completely understand, but also want to be able to reference because they made good points.

-Another creator i follow had their channel hacked, all content replaced with bitcoinshilling. The older videos were eventually restored, but there were a couple days where the content was completely unavailible, and the restoration was not exactly guarenteed.

-i use youtube for background noise a lot. This might be one of the reasons i rewatch a lot of essays and reviews or music videos. While yes, i can use regular youtube for this, tracking, ads, etc are an issue (yes, adblockers exist, but youtube is escalating the war with them). It’s easier to just pull up and watch on my own server instead.

I think this kind of conversation always needs to highlight the use case/cost. Like, if you just want to cache some content that you could re-download, aren’t attached too emotionally, and get a used hard drive for a steep discount? I’d say go for it. Especially since there are generally better chances of indicating failure with hdds.

SsDs have an annoying habit of just dying, at least on me. No warning and no chance of recovering data. Maybe there a good use case out there where you would be willing to run that risk, especially if they are cheap enough, but most of the ones I can think of I’d just grab a new drive anyway, would have to be a hell of a discount .

This might be of interest to you https://youtu.be/_w6PCHutmb4?si=vNgyCSdDcEVVmHdY

If you upload your stuff to torrenting sites, you could consider that a free back up.

The problem is even if there was some sort of free cloud storage, it would be unreliable. If you’ve been around, Google cloud used to offer a lot more but has since cracked down- sometimes with relatively little warning.

I’m going to say probably not, but depends on your use case.

Putting data on a blockchain is closer to a p2p system. You release it out in the wild and then have little direct control on it. For me, the primary driver of self hosting is taking ownership and control of my data and systems, where here you still primarily rely on other people’s systems.

The systems you have Interacting with that data ? Maybe.

So I don’t think you’ll find a cloud provider- especially an established, reputable one, that doesn’t have a terms of service that includes do not upload illegal material.

So the thing is, even if their is a site that doesn’t police user uploads today- that might change at any time in the future. Even if they claim to encrypt your data, if it’s not done on your end, they can unencrypt it.

Your best bet is encrypt it before you upload- that’s a hassle , or just self host it.