MySpace Server Migration Loses 12 Years of Users’ Uploads

Dominique Adams

18 March 2019, 04.23pm

MySpace, one of the original social media networks, has proffered apologies to its users after admitting it lost a huge amount of data during a botched server migration.

Social media network, MySpace, put out a message on its platform saying that “any photos, videos and audio files” uploaded more than three years ago may no longer be available. Users have been complaining about issues with music uploaded between 2003 and 2015 for roughly a year.

At one point the network was the most dominant social media platform, and in 2006 was the most visited site in the US.

The site reportedly helped launch the careers of artists including the Arctic Monkeys and Kate Nash. But since the advent of various other more popular platforms, the site has suffered a significant decline in its user base.

In a statement, the company said: “As a result of a server migration project, any photos, videos, and audio files you uploaded more than three years ago may no longer be available on or from Myspace. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

Andy Biao, who helped build the site, tweeted that the loss could amount to roughly 50 million tracks by 14 million artists over that period. Biao also raised the question over whether the loss was accidental.

“Flagrant incompetence may be bad PR, but it still sounds better than ‘we can’t be bothered with the effort and cost of migrating and hosting 50 million old MP3s’.” he tweeted.

While Myspace has been largely eclipsed by other platforms, some people who were avid users during the site’s heyday still used it as an archive and dismayed to have lost all these electronic memories.

Others are already using this incident as a prime example as to why users should not depend on contemporary services to host their data/art.

Since its rapid decline, the site has tried in vain to transform itself in a music first site, however, this incident is likely to do much to damage this endeavour.

This isn’t the first incident of missing data for Myspace. In 2016 the platform confirmed it was hacked and a large set of its users’ data was lifted by cybercriminals and made available for sale in an online hacker forum.

It was reported that over 360 million accounts were involved in that incident and the pilfered records included data such as email address and password.