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You see, the bad thing about the Internet is that, technically, everything on it exists in only one copy. This means that once the person who's hosting the content stops doing so... it's off to Archive.is, Archive Team, the Google cache, and the Internet Archive in vain hope.
  • The official uploads of Anime Campaign have been taken down for the sake of its Animated Adaptation Epithet Erased, as it spoils the whole thing while being presented in a much less digestible format. Brendan Blaber has stated on Tumblr that he would prefer that people don't watch it, and that those who have seen Anime Campaign while it was up should avoid spoiling its plot. However, unofficial uploads can still be found with a bit of Googling.
  • In the U.K., the FirstMediaWorks versions of Bauer Media's Big City Network sites (Key 103, Hallam FM, Viking FM, TFM, Metro-Radio, Rock FM) and Global Radio/GCap Media/Orion Media's radio station sites (Heart/Trent FM/Red Dragon FM etc.), all of which are at http://SHORTENEDSITENAME.fimc.net (example URL). Only FirstMediaWorks has the copies, and they're hard to obtain.
    • As with the Encyclopædia Dramatica article, it's pretty much the same situation.
    • Taking it back one stage further, the versions of Bauer Media's Big City network website platform used between August 2001 to May 2005, which was critically acclaimed, and is still popular. Getting a copy is... well, let's just say, not easy.
  • Blip.tv went under in 2015. Many content providers managed to upload their videos elsewhere... if the copyright claims on YouTube, Vimeo, etc. allowed them to do so (some changed at least the most blatant copyvio to bypass this). Yet others still have their productions MIA - even worse for those that had their channels deleted once Maker Studios acquired Blip in 2012 and decided to streamline the website's content.
  • Cartoon Book Club, a podcast hosted by KC Green (of Gunshow fame), Tyson Hesse (of Boxer Hockey fame) and Geneva Hogdson (Cartoon Fun Time, Teenage Spaceship) disappeared after only ten episodes, owing to the long hiatuses between new episodes. The only evidence left that the podcast ever existed is a long abandoned Tumblr page.
  • The first Death Note Abridged by TioH and Dargonakis, made in the days when "abridging community" wasn't a term and LittleKuriboh still had his original account. The concept of this series was mainly the same as the original manga and anime...except that Light was notably...less intelligent, although considering that everybody else was also dumbed down, that really didn't increase his chances of getting caught. It was not only cancelled, but the videos were removed. The only remains are the first two episodes uploaded by a fan and a two-part "Best Of" compilation, also made by a fan.
  • The biggest Duran Duran website for the longest time was one called the Lizard King Duran Duran website. It began its existence in 1997, at least a full year before Duran Duran began its own official website, and for years it provided far more content and was a far better website overall than the official one. Band founder Nick Rhodes even name-dropped it once on a BBC-hosted web chat in December 1998, making it one of the few to get official support. It has since faded into obscurity, and while its website was archived by the Wayback Machine, the earlier iterations when it was an AOL-hosted user site and a great many of its web pages aren't accessible via the Internet Archive.
  • Whilst there were some good reasons for Girlvinyl shutting down Encyclopædia Dramatica and replacing it with Oh Internet, it still represented a MASSIVE loss of recorded internet culture and e-drama. If you could scrape away the Black Comedy you would find a veritable trove of uncensored, documented truth on a variety of matters, pleasant or not. Fortunately several restoration projects sprang up immediately but are somewhat crippled by the fact that the old ED admins aren't going to release the archive, despite not using any of it for OI, resulting in a loss of a LOT of images and text that are hard, if not impossible, to find elsewhere. Some have compared it to burning down the Library of Congress, which, content aside, is a surprisingly accurate analogy.
  • Who would've ever thought GeoCities would go down? How many thousands of sites were lost? Granted, most of them sucked, but still!
  • The Lobo (Webseries) has most of its content kept in video mirrors on YouTube and flash files since it was removed from the website showing it.
  • The ninth episode of Object Terror's original series was removed when the show's creator removed the OG series episodes. When RedBreeloom reuploaded the entire OG series in one video, only episode 9 was missing from the compilation, meaning the episode is still lost to this day.
  • Any site, once deleted, is pretty much gone forever. Luckily, the Wayback Machine makes it possible to find at least some of those sites. Among the 150 billion pages saved since 1996, there's got to be a lot of information impossible to find anywhere else, like this fascinating account of an expedition to Kowloon Walled City before its demolition. Unfortunately, some sites couldn't be saved, such as those predating the Wayback Machine, those which locked out the crawlers with a robots.txt file note , those based around Flash (since the crawlers can't access the Flash content) and a rare few that have been deliberately excluded due to inappropriate content.
  • And before GeoCities, there was Xoom, a popular domain that existed between 1996 and 2001.
    • And then there's the instance of all the old ISP-hosted user websites that have been taken down throughout the years due to said ISPs not hosting websites anymore or just ceasing to exist, most notably AOL. Better hope your favorites among the lot were archived or moved their websites to their own domains....
  • The first season of LoadingReadyRun contained some copyright music. However, since it was made prior to the existence of YouTube, the Internet was a lot less strict at the time and they were even able to sell DVDs of it. Now they can't even upload most of the videos to their own site. There is, however, one season one DVD being shared around the UK, and there's a list to request it for a week on their forums. The creators ask that nobody copies it or creates a torrent of it, and so far people have upheld that request, making this the only way to view all of the first season. Many of the videos are also available via the aforementioned archival site, but special features and bonus videos are only available through DVD sharing.
  • Similar to GeoCities, the sudden shut down of iPBFree caused thousands of forums to be lost forever. There was a lot of anger from all parties involved in the following weeks.
  • The only way anything from image sharing site Fotopic will have survived is if a user saved any images from it for their own worth, otherwise all 8 years of the site history has vanished into the ether after it went into administration. The Wayback Machine is unable to archive anything from it too, and many of the users had their sole copies of their images on the site. It's a pretty big deal.
  • When Sci-Fi changed its name to Syfy, the URL changed as well. The "Sci-Fi Wire" news website went to its own domain, but lots of old stuff was lost.
  • Any page on This Very Wiki that enters The Permanent Red Link Club or gets an Example Sectionectomy. Even if the page or examples list is felt to have outlived its usefulness, there is often a lot of interesting and witty information that nevertheless gets deleted as well. Your only hope is to keep up with pending page or example deletions and back up the affected pages before it's too late.
  • After YouTube closed down the account of infamous game commentator Kolibiri, his hundreds of videos vanished completely. Several users have already reuploaded a huge chunk of his videos, but it still seems that a few dozen are still missing.
  • Machinima deleted everything on their channel January 2019 without warning the original content creators. This makes it to where the only way to watch the works that were on their channel now is through unofficial uploads. Creators of certain videos, on the other hand, are at least uploading their works to their own channels.
    • Counterspell was among the series that were originally uploaded on the Machinima channel that hasn't been uploaded by the official creators following its removal.
  • Likewise, Nullmetal Alchemist, Faulerro's Abridged Series of Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), got his YouTube channel taken down by Sony. While his channel was later restored, Nullmetal was not, leaving only the Christmas crossover with Danganronpa Abridged Thing. Faulerro later deleted all his videos in late 2019 out of frustration with YouTube's policies, particularly on videos "for kids" to comply with COPPA.
  • Nintendo set every Nintendo Minute episode to private at the end of 2022 after hosts Kit and Krysta went on to create their own channel.
  • Most of the online featurettes and extra content that promoted Batman Begins and The Dark Knight haven't been released on any official DVD set. This includes TV spots, trailers, making-of videos (which focused on the creation of the clown masks and a retrospective of the first film) from the Comcast website, tie-in television specials (that had exclusive interviews and deleted footage), the "Interactive Batcave" videos to promote the first film from IGN, the first viral marketing clip from The Dark Knight (which had the character Rachel Dawes talking about Harvey Dent at a press conference), and much more.
  • The work of many Channel Awesome reviewers are often found only through fan uploads (specially videos made in the aforementioned Blip, given YouTube's copyright policies get brutal at times):
    • Episodes of The Nostalgia Critic are uploaded once cleared of copyright. Because of this, several reviews haven't been officially re-uploaded, notably The Care Bears: Adventure in Wonderland and the movie review of Bébé's Kids (only available on YouTube with Russian subtitles).
    • The first version of the first episode of Suede Played, which was shot in his parents' house, instead of his new one. It also was a normal Let's Play, instead of the second version. It was accidentally uploaded to his YouTube account, and nearly instantly it was put on private. Thankfully someone mirrored it.
    • Every single video made by Daniel "That Aussie Guy" Rizzo for Channel Awesome (except Ask That Aussie Guy and Trailer Trash). While he did upload them to his YouTube account, they are on private mode and his original blip.tv account and his Bored Shitless account were deleted when blip.tv's site got redesigned.
    • Bennett the Sage:
    • Out of the seven videos that That Chick With The Goggles made for the site, only three were released on her YouTube account and her blip.tv account was deleted.
    • While Lindsay Ellis has opened a channel for most of her classic videos (only Freddy Got Fingered and The Lord of the Rings are in her own), a few of them are still to be uploaded or can only be found in unofficial sources. This includes the Dune, yo video, which was taken down due to Lindsay iRiff of the film with Noah being intended to replace the review. And once Creator Backlash raised, she took them off, with the unlisted videos of The Nostalgia Chick only being available for her Patreon backers.
    • Most of not all of Brad Jones' videos up to about 2013 are nigh-impossible to view because the original videos got deleted from YouTube. To make matters worse the older videos that were on Blip or Vid.Me can't be viewed. Brad at least uploaded most, if not all of The Cinema Snob straight to his website, but on YouTube various channels have kept some of those videos in circulation (and there's also Brad's Russian fans on VK!). Of special mention is the Snob's Grizzly II review, taken down after said (incomplete) film's producer complained, but disgruntled fans made sure it survives on YouTube.
    • Most of Brows Held High pre-2015 output survives through unofficial uploads, given Kyle regrets his old more comedic style compared to current analytical one and is also a victim of copyright. Of special note is What Is It (as director Crispin Glover asked for a takedown - Youtube uploads usually fall, but the Internet Archive has a copy) and The Girlfriend Experience (only existed on Blip with commentary as Kyle didn't like the backlash that accused him of slut shaming - amusingly, when Blip fell, the original version of The Girlfriend Experience was mirrored on various sites, while the commentary version has disappeared).
    • That SciFi Guy became inactive after 2014, and with the blip shutdown, a large number of his reviews are currently hard to find. Some survive on YouTube... but with Russian voice-overs pasted onto them, creating a language barrier that reduces accessibility.
    • Pushing Up Roses lost most of her videos once she shut down her Blip account. The Head review has been reuploaded behind the paywall of Patreon.
  • JesuOtaku has a fair number of his older reviews missing, or only showing up in really unusual places. For example, his Evangelion review can only be found on a JAPANESE streaming service these days. Not helped by the turmoil Channel Awesome began going through in 2017, he's adamantly opposed to bringing the stuff back to get bashed by association with the old site.
  • Related to JO's work, many of the videos by his previous compatriots, the DesuDesBrigade have been lost due to a mix of Blip dying and their old website expiring. While Arkada and Professor Otaku are still making videos, fellow ex-contributor VixenOfNine has invoked this trope out of fear of her reviews impacting negatively on her future employment in the video game business. That said, other works weren't so lucky, such as Prof and Vixen's "Red Scorpion" series, the weekly update show "Pocky Spot" (with only a single episode surviving on Vimeo), the annual Taishi Awards and much of the content by Malakye, Rabbit, Hitch and Kagami. There is some good news, though, as the Brigade's podcast series DesuRattle lives on in its entirety through Internet Archive.
  • While a lot of Nash's old WTFIWWY videos, Doctor Who reviews, and some of his Here There Be Dragons fantasy movie reviews are on Youtube and Vimeo, his review of The Crow is still missing as of Vid.me's shutdown.
  • The Archive Team is a group specifically created to keep circulating these metaphorical tapes when it comes to deleted web content. Its founder described it as a "league of archiving superheroes".
  • Candle Cove is a creepypasta based on the premise of this trope.
  • The Mystery Of The ZenHex is a well known and acclaimed forum that used to allow people to post poetry and other user-created content. The site ended up morphing with myYearbook in 2005, and then banded back off in 2007, losing some of its content. Then, in 2011 the site was completely remodeled and all of the site's 10 years worth of content was lost forever. You can view the way the site used to be on the Wayback Machine, but none of the user-created content can be located.
    • It seems that as of 2012, the site has restored its old database and layout and has restored all non-quiz content to the site... But now is lacking all the material gained between the 2011-2012 newer layout. There's really no winning with this site, is there?
    • As of 2013 it looks like the forum has officially been retired, and a lot of the content can now no longer be accessed.
  • The change in format caused many games from TeenNick and Nickelodeon sites to go away. You can get a few of them on other sites but most are scams that require you to pay.
  • Once a YouTube video is deleted, it's gone. Permanently. Unless there's a reupload of it or it got archived in Wayback Machine, there's NO way of finding a deleted Youtube video. If it doesn't get reuploaded or archived, any evidence of a deleted Youtube video is gone for eternity.
    • Some fan-made content featured on YouTube or any video service can be unfortunately erased from existence.
      • Same goes for Youtube channels that ended up getting deleted.
    • Also, anytime anything gets taken down on YouTube. The video site is notorious for cracking down unnecessarily on users who have videos accused of copyright infringement, regardless of whether or not the videos actually break the law.
      • "YouTube DJ's" who upload electronic music are infamous for having their channels taken down after 3 years of unfettered activity and millions of collective hits. Greats like HD Trance Music and Maikel 631 had hundreds of videos during their heyday, and spawned dozens of copycats, re-upload channels, and name-takers as they were systematically taken down in waves by YouTube and copyright-trolling record labels.
      • Anime Music Video creators also have it quite rough, as anime publishers and distributors can be quite protective of their work, and a rights dispute over an older series can get AMVs caught in the crossfire. Luckily, YouTube users have a much more "avid" community set up around AMVs, and many have been fought for and won back. Still, it is not uncommon for a creator to give up on reposting their award-winning AMV after getting in hot water, or for an older creator to have abandoned his work.
  • Social media users also have an option to delete or even deactivate their account. If they choose to delete their account, then anything, literally ANYTHING, their posts, their pics, anything they post on their account are permanently scrubbed from existence.
    • If someone tries to access their deleted social media account, all it shows is a blank page and a message saying "User not found" or "Account is deleted" or something similar.
      • In some cases though, the only way to know the existence of that deleted account or see what that deleted account looked like before they vanished without trace is either through screenshots of that account or web archives.
  • Two websites that compiled Japanese game sales, The Shrine of Data (closed in 2005 due to also publishing the American NPD numbers) and Japan Game Charts (closed in 2011) - which even have the problem of not being on archive.org anymore. (It gets worse when you consider The Other Wiki uses both sites a lot as reference...)
  • Have fun finding old posts on Avidgamers, a server/service that provided the means to make your own community that consisted of a splashpage, a login feature, and then the rest of the site. When Avidgamers went down, it took any content past the splash page with it for every one of these sites.
  • Any time a M.U.G.E.N site goes down, whether due to a server failure or the owner of the site deciding they don't like their work anymore, a metric ton of stuff usually gets lost. Even worse with WIPs—unless a beta version of the character was released before the deletion, you'll never get to see it in action. The MUGEN community sort of frowns on keeping the tapes circulated, though—mainly due to warehousing, leaked characters and the possibility of people recoding/re-spriting a character and saying it's "theirs".
  • While this is not the case for most of The Hire, it seems to be the case for the episode "The Follow", supposedly due to contract issues with Forest Whitaker.
  • Neurotically Yours had several shorts and episodes that were lost once the author moved his content to YouTube. Some of the lost shorts or episodes simply could not be shown on YouTube due to the mature content.
  • YouTube commentator Mskull01 had his channel closed down in February 2013, taking with it his entire "X is not funny" commentary series. So far, it seems that only a very small number of his videos have been reuploaded. He created a new channel at ElyRiffs, but said on it that he would like to move on from the commentary field.
  • Former YouTube vlogger Miss Hannah Minx, who has been inactive since late-2013, had all of her remaining videos on both her main and BonusMinx channels suddenly set to private in July of 2021, not helping the fact that all of the original video URLs also were blacklisted from the Wayback Machine entirely. The only way to watch her videos now is through reuploads, although an archive containing most of her surviving videos was created several years prior to her original channels' mass-privatizations, however, some videos still remain at large.
  • Many YouTube Poop creators have had their channels taken down for copyright infringement, or just closed the channel out of disinterest. Once this happens, if they have created notable videos, they will be gone forever, unless fans are kind enough to archive said videos and re-upload them. Notable examples include Igiulamam, Squirrelous, and CommanderGwonam.
    • In 2012, a Call of Duty fan hacked the account of legendary YouTube Pooper mark3611 and deleted all of his poops. Fortunately, angered fans have re-uploaded most of his poops. He came back in April 2014 with several new poops... only to have his account suspended near the end of 2015. Most of those have also been reuploaded, but "The third wave of feminism" and "THE TAPE THAT GOT HULK HOGAN FIRED FROM WWE" have not been reuploaded anywhere.
    • JitteryDragon's YTPs have constantly run afoul of copyright. There are scattered fragments of his YTPs on YouTube, but a complete collection of his YTPs is only available through an extremely unstable torrent.
    • In 2015, AlvinYTP closed down his YouTube account. This resulted in the loss of some of the most popular Poops in its heyday, such as "Aladdin commits suicide" and "Grover teaches YTP". His more popular poops have been reuploaded by fans, but most of his poops with less views are extremely hard to find now.
  • The Annotators are taking steps to defy this, as they're well aware that the series is the kind of channel that gets shut down by copyright-trolling jerkasses and overly-litigious executives. One of the Annotators makes sure to record every new episode and store them somewhere safe so if something does happen then the work won't be lost forever and can just be reuploaded somewhere less trigger happy about copyright.
  • During the 2008 US presidential election, Ron Howard teamed up with both Andy Griffith and Henry Winkler to film a video promoting Barack Obama's candidacy, which was uploaded to Funny Or Die. The video has vanished from the site and the internet, with the only copies to be found a less-than-stellar conservative-themed dub.
  • The Stupid Adventures of Taco-Man has been removed from Samination's YouTube and Newgrounds channels, even though the character remains active in Taco-Man Plays a Video Game. Creator Sam T. has stated on twitter that The Stupid Adventures is now embarrassing and outdated to him, and that he has no plans to re-upload it on the sites. However, one Stupid Adventure, "Knock it Off", currently remains viewable on Sam's Vessel page.
  • The Metal Slug Database, a huge archive of all things Metal Slug (including a lot of fan stuff and rarities) that started in 2003, suddenly went off the air in 2011, replaced by a single blog page with a cryptic comment from the maintainer, until even that one disappeared.
  • Back in the late 2000s and early 2010s, Voltalia had a YouTube channel called "voltarsgirlfriend" that housed, among many things, several AMVs and a Massive Multiplayer Crossover video series called "Total Drama Highschool." She accidentally closed it a couple years later and deleted all of Season 1 and part of Season 2 in the process.
  • When a Tumblr user deletes a blog, the only way for the posts to survive is if someone else has reblogged them to their own blog. But since those posts are not searchable, locating vanished art and comics is often an impossible task. "Liked" posts vanish when the source is deleted.
  • The Bioware Social Network forums closed in late 2016, taking with it a massive amount of information and help topics centered around the company's major franchises like Mass Effect and Dragon Age, along with plenty of fan projects that were dedicated to mods for all three games. While a number of these mods have been saved and preserved by dedicated fans on sites such as Nexus Mods, many others are inaccessible and lost.
  • Greeny Phatom: Most of the original episodes by Robert Stainton have been deleted along with his accounts, with mirrors (sometimes altered for whatever reason) being the only way to see them now.
  • The Bamboolais, an extremely obscure webtoon from 2001 that only ever had 5 episodes released for it and was available on a website called The Born Image, as well as on Newgrounds. The Born Image went defunct in 2006, and the Newgrounds mirrors of the episodes are gone too, with only one episode known to survive on the Internet Archive. The only surviving snippet of another episode is a single image. The series also had a Flash game released for it called "Terry in the Dark", which survived for a surprisingly long time after the rest of The Bamboolais was lost, but the game was later taken down as well. If you plan to try to find the whole series, good luck.
  • The Cyanide & Happiness Show used to be available on YouTube and Amazon Video, but due to Explosm Entertainment releasing the streaming rights to VRV, there may never be a future DVD release. The lone release of the show was a Blu-ray for the first season that was only made for people who backed the show.
  • After allegations were made that ProJared cheated on his wife with another YouTuber, some YouTubers have been either deleting or privating old videos that they have done with him. Jared himself privated an old Let's Play of Asagao Academy: Normal Boots Club he did with his then-wife; he also made his "You've Been Lied To" video, in which he broke his months-long silence to refute said allegations, private after he started uploading regularly again. The only way to watch these is through unofficial reuploads.
  • Ever since the dawn of Web 2.0 (i.e. the version of the WWW dominated by social media, i.e. since the beginning of Friendster), a great many message board communities have disappeared off the internet landscape. This trope kicks into effect if even the Internet Archive can't save said message board.
  • Any time a YouTube channel gets too many TOS violations it is obviously taken down, which isn't typically a huge loss except if said channel hosted a lot of valuable/rare videos, e.g. one called "Hezakya Music and Newz" that featured an informative CBS special called "You and the Commercial", a video compilation of news reports about the landmark Loving vs. Virginia Supreme Court case that struck down anti-mixed race marriage laws throughout the U.S, and an important five hour long compilation of early news reports about HIV/AIDS that served a real historic and educational purpose.
  • Although Melissa Hunter removed the episodes of Adult Wednesday Addams from her YouTube channel after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from the Charles Addams estate, fans of the series reuploaded the videos so they could still be seen and enjoyed (albeit not legally).
  • There are several flash games that are lost after the discontinuation of Shockwave Flash, so good luck trying to find several games that are deleted. Hope you can find them on Flashpoint.
  • Sakura Wars:
    • Before launching the official Sakura Wars website in March 2001, Sega already had official profiles of the original Sega Saturn releases of Sakura Wars and Sakura Wars 2: Thou Shalt Not Die. When Sega redesigned their official website the same year, the content was not converted to Flash and was lost. There's little chance of finding some of the official material on Sega's pages for the SS releases, such as the promotional videos.
    • Even after Sega redesigned SakuraTaisen.com again in March 2019, the original video content that was on the Sega Channel wasn't converted when it was shut down in late 2010, so fans searching for the original promotional videos outside of YouTube will be completely out of luck.
    • Red Entertainment published the canonical Taisho Roman Route stories, written by Ryoma Kaneko and supervised by Naoki Morita, on their former official website, "Ryuseiza", throughout 2001. However, the site merged with Red's own website on September 30, 2003 and it can be only accessed through the Internet Archive.
  • All content that was on Screen Junkies Plus seemingly has complications preventing uploads anywhere else. The Screen Junkies Roasts in particular only have the preview clips on the channel, four whole episodes saved by a fan, and a clip from the Beauty and the Beast Roast.
  • When Rooster Teeth did a full rehaul of the site in 2019, the videos were kept, but just about everything else was lost - original comments, posts on profile pages, and the whole forum! Given the site is excluded from archive.org, only whatever could be saved through screenshots remain.
  • The original ending to Dragon Ball Z Abridged Episode 60 had mention of the series continuing into the Buu Saga. When the decision was made to cancel the series, this ending was removed, thus the only way you can see the original teaser is to find reuploaded videos.
  • There were many parodies made of the Angry German Kid video. However, some parodies have missing episodes that were either taken down or copyright-flagged (usually for using a popular song from the era). Some channels were even taken down due to either getting three strikes or creator dissatisfaction.
  • A 2011 hack took down the forums for Sony Pictures Entertainment, and with it, several years' worth of forum posts about Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune, Rescue Me, 'Til Death, and The King of Queens. Most have not been preserved by the Wayback Machine, either.
  • Invoked with Unus Annus, a channel created by Mark Fischbach (Markiplier) and Ethan Nestor (CrankGamePlays). All of the videos were lost when the channel was deleted on November 14, 2020, exactly a year after Unus Annus was started. Mark and Ethan are well aware that people will reupload the videos and have pointed out that, if possible, the videos will be taken down. The only way to see the channel's videos now is via the unauthorized reuploads, and only time will tell if any of these reuploads remain or if all of them are removed from the web.
  • The Heroes Wiki, a very big database with over 6 thousand articles, was shut down in 2019 due to lowered traffic (the franchise had been dormant for years) making the domain expenses unfeasible, but a mirror of it was launched.
  • After Greg Wilcot left The Completionist in 2015, he messaged Jirard Khalil in 2017 requesting that all videos on the channel featuring him be taken down - including all of the first 120 mainline Completionist videos, along with numerous others on the channel. Jirard complied with the request, but gave fans thirty days to save the videos, and gave permission for fans to essentially do whatever they wanted with them except reupload them in their entirety. The full videos can still be found archived off YouTube by third parties.
  • While executive producer of The Price Is Right, Mike Richards hosted a podcast called The Randumb Show. After Richards was chosen to succeed Alex Trebek helming Jeopardy!, news articles reported that he made derogatory comments against women (particularly the models on Price), Haitians, Asians and Jews on the podcast. Richards scrubbed the podcasts and apologized for the remarks, but fans quickly got a hold of them and started uploading them to Web Archive. Richards eventually stepped down from hosting Jeopardy!, and soon after he was fired as executive producer.
  • Following the success of Lucas the Spider, someone tried to make a series called "Daddy Spider", which followed Lucas' father as he tried to look for his son. It became fairly popular to the point where Youtube comments on Lucas videos would say that "his father was looking for him". However, because the videos directly piggybacked off "Lucas" (even including footage of the latter), it was deemed as a copyright violation. The videos were taken down and the Youtube account was closed, and looking for it on Youtube usually links to videos talking about the copyright fiasco, as well as some reaction videos from other users.
  • The Agony Booth thankfully removed robots.txt when most of the old content was put behind a paywall. And once the site was suddenly shut down with minimal warning beforehand in 2022, archive.org became the only way to read two decades worth of articles (the video reviews are at least still on Youtube and such).
  • Once Blogger Beware had the domain lapse in 2022, it was only survived by archive.org and a wiki that annotated the reviews .
  • Natalie Tran of Community Channel has deleted almost all of her oldest videos from her channel. Archives of them exist in obscure corners of YouTube and the internet though, with some easier to find than others, and a good possibility that there are some which are lost forever.
  • Jon Hein sold the jumptheshark.com domain in 2006 to Gemstar, owners of TVGuide. Gemstar would go onto redesign the website to a short-lived generic tabloid page in early 2009, taking all the show pages, votes and comments with it. For the longest time, robots.txt restricted access to the former content on Web Archive. Thankfully, robots.txt seems to have been lifted, and most of the old pages before and after the March 1, 2007 site overhaul can now be seen.
  • Unlike fellow Keentoons Space Tree and Bonus Stage, Robotbox and Cactus hasn't been uploaded to YouTube, and due to the death of Adobe Flash, it can be very difficult to see any episode of the series without an old version of Flash Player or an old browser that has it as a plugin.
  • One of the most popular comedy personalities in the earliest years of YouTube was tokenblackchic, who ultimately decided to delete her channel. The only traces that now remain of her channel’s existence are a few videos that have been reuploaded on other channels, and the channel’s Social Blade stats, which show that she had almost 40k subscribers (a lot for the time period), and almost ten million video views.
  • As of an unknown date, all episodes of Next Time On Lonny have been privated for unknown reasons. No re-uploads are known to exist, meaning that the series will very likely remain permanently lost.
  • In-Universe, no known footage of Welcome Home (Clown Illustrations) exists, but the archive team is trying desperately to recover any and all tapes and media linked to the show.
  • This problem became so widespread in Google search results, where links there no longer point to their originally targeted file, web page, or server, but rather 404, 410 or NXDOMAIN, or leads to parking domain with just advertising and little-to-no valuable content, making them broken, dead or orphan, led to the search engine creating a "soft 404" label to eradicate the issue and accept only quality pages.
  • The Welfare Gamer was a series by Retrogamer 3 that got a limited-run DVD that has since gone out of print. The episodes were removed from YouTube to make the release feel important, so the work is currently inaccessible.
  • Shark Jumping: All of their videos have been set to private, making it impossible to view the show.
  • Sometime in 2014 ImageShack deleted many, many images which had been stored on its servers for years, in order to "save space", which has infuriated a lot of users. A lot of websites around the Internet are now pockmarked with Imageshack's logo in place of former images. Any images not saved previously are presumably permanently lost.
  • Myspace accidentally lost all the music uploaded from its first 12 years, in 2019, in a server migration, losing over 50 million songs from 14 million artists.
  • There are 95 total livestreams for SBI Rust. Unfortunately, they aren't really well archived. Only a small fraction are still available online.
  • After a series of events too controversial to go over here, MsBreezy deleted her YouTube channel, making just about every single one of her videos either only available from the Wayback Machine or entirely lost to time.
  • The Mega Man fan user MegaCocorock takes this concept to its logical extreme; he has developed several Boss Rush-styled Mega Man fangames, but is so paranoid about having his assets stolen that he only uploads gameplay videos of them, which he takes down after a certain period. This makes it effectively impossible for anyone outside of him to actually play the fangames.

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