Until we "fix" this, or find a permanence solution, entire swathes of culture will keep vanishing wholesale, until nothing remains on record from our age - a dark age, or gap - when seen from the future, looking back. Hindsight will only find a void - AIs, perhaps, our only remaining collective memory from this age up to an age where information permanence is widespread and solved.-
The further problem is that this impermanence is, structurally, a "default" for the current, dominating media - whereas it was only a fraction of knowledge that was lost or vanished when the imperative modes of transmission were "permanent-by-default".-
Further, methinks, we would be missing on a great opportunity - enabled by technology - to make knowledge permanent and accesible - going a bit beyond, from remedial action to constructive action ...
The other side of that goes to impermanence as a feature, the "right to be forgotten" and such aspects ...
... which are also important and in league with the "natural" entropy you rightly point out exists ...
... but the pressing problem is - methinks - on the other side of that spectrum, the side of guaranteeing what up to very recently had been a feature of information media: Its capacity to transcend time, and remain.-
Meanwhile, last week they wrote down like $11 billion on their balance sheet, due to the devaluation of all the TV networks.
So long-term brand value isn't really worth a ton because they're in so much debt they can't borrow from future profits to pay current debts. The reason they're shutting down these websites is to do two things, first streamline their streaming offerings to just Max, and second to free up the licenses to all their content in the vault to sell to other streaming platforms for cash today.
And they're in so much debt that no one is going to buy them out. So there's going to be no brand in the long term if they don't fix it.
AT&T truly fucked them over, my prediction is in a year or two there will be a fire sale of former Warner assets. Netflix or Amazon buys the backlot.
