@Bitfinexed [1], who tracks all kinds of scams (the Tether one is going to be the real doozy when that unravels) has been diligently saving Bitconnect videos, tweets, etc. He is pseudononymous, so the question now is how to effectively get these (apparently) hundreds of gigs of videos archived/shared. [2] I can't imagine he's the only one to have thought to do this, though. Bitconnect was simply too blatant of a skeezy ponzi for no one to have bothered tracking down who all these people were...

[1] https://twitter.com/Bitfinexed

[2] https://twitter.com/Bitfinexed/status/953510174244986880

They should get in touch with Jason Scott or Archive Team in general to get them in the Internet Archive, or upload them to the Internet Archive themselves.

EDIT: I don't have Twitter, if someone wouldn't mind, could they connect @Bitfinexed to @textfiles?

I've been archiving the channels of several players in this space and will be making the content available over IPFS[1] in the future.

[1] - https://ipfs.io/

Google surely must have a copy, as well as Archive.org. These people benefitted from the scam; they should be held accountable as well.

I love these comments because they highlight the ambivalence of the HN commentariat. If google actually had copies of deleted user data, the privacy-minded would lose their heads. And they’d be right because there are all kinds of laws around this. Deleted user data has to be really gone, even from backups, within a finite time.

> they highlight the ambivalence of the HN commentariat

They don't.

This was:

a) Deliberately published (ie. not leaked)

b) By the uploader who is also the content creator (not e.g. doxing or copyright infringement)

c) Without breaching their own privacy (not e.g. posting a nude of themselves)

d) In this case possibly if not likely unlawful (hence warranting a police investigation)

e) For-profit (non-profit crimes have less priority)

Furthermore:

> Deleted user data has to be really gone, even from backups, within a finite time.

Sure, but we're talking -at this point- one or two days max here and we're talking about a scam.

There is no law (that I'm aware of in the US) that requires Google to purge any user data except GDPR (which applies only to EU residents after May 25, 2018), or perhaps the EU's "right to be forgotten" (which isn't going to supersede preserving evidence for an investigation).

Those Youtube videos exist, if not with a "is_deleted" flag, in Youtube backups. Some are already in the Internet Archive.

I'd rather websites did not keep my private data when I delete my account but I have no problem with the archival of public content. Of course with social networks pushing their users to overshare all the time the line can be pretty fuzzy with comment history and things like that but I don't see how anybody could consider archiving a video published on Youtube as a breach of user privacy.

You put something up voluntarily on the open internet, you lose your right to keeping that thing private.

An enterprising prosecutor will probably not find it that challenging to get a copy from YouTube.

The fact that the videos are "taken down" from public view doesn't mean that they won't be available in google's archives when the authorities file a subpoena for them.

This is the Internet, there must be a copy somewhere.

Maybe a different youtuber criticized one of those famous recommenders, and included relevant clips of the recommendation in their video?