# Can I trust youtube to keep my videos? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 15, 2014, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-trust-youtube-to-keep-my-videos/678906 "2014-01-15T20:45:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![blueslipper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b5a626/32.png) [@blueslipper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blueslipper)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2014, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-trust-youtube-to-keep-my-videos/678906/1 "2014-01-15T20:45:41Z")
I have uploaded all my videos from my Ipad to youtube. Then I have to delete them- otherwise I will not have enough room on my Ipad. Can I trust that my videos will stay on youtube? ---
**Author:** ![Alley\_Dweller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alley_dweller/32/430_2.png) [@Alley\_Dweller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alley_Dweller)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2014, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-trust-youtube-to-keep-my-videos/678906/2 "2014-01-15T20:54:50Z")
Absolutely, positively not. If someone (or some automated bot) complains of a copyright violation or one of their secret algorithms decides (correctly or incorrectly) that you have violated their TOS, your stuff will be gone in a heartbeat and your account may be gone. And they make no guarantees about storage or keeping your videos forever. Youtube is not a place for backup storage. There are web sites for that. Look at [dropbox.com](http://www.dropbox.com) for example. ---
**Author:** ![blueslipper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b5a626/32.png) [@blueslipper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blueslipper)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2014, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-trust-youtube-to-keep-my-videos/678906/3 "2014-01-15T20:55:54Z")
How can I get my videos from youtube onto Dropbox? ---
**Author:** ![Alley\_Dweller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alley_dweller/32/430_2.png) [@Alley\_Dweller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alley_Dweller)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2014, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-trust-youtube-to-keep-my-videos/678906/4 "2014-01-15T21:07:09Z")
“Then I have to delete them- otherwise I will not have enough room on my Ipad.” That was written in the future tense, so it sounded like you had not yet deleted them from your iPad. But if you are saying that you already deleted them, I don’t know of any direct way to go from youtube to dropbox. Maybe someone else does. If one doesn’t exist, you’ll have to use one of the many youtube downloading apps to get your videos back to your iPad or some other computer and then upload them to dropbox from there. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2014, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-trust-youtube-to-keep-my-videos/678906/5 "2014-01-15T21:15:57Z")
If the videos are marked private and the copyright is owned by someone who doesn’t use the ContentID system, I don’t think they’d be flagged but that gets more and more unlikely by the day. I don’t know of any way to get video off youtube except by using a third party app to rip them anew. ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2014, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-trust-youtube-to-keep-my-videos/678906/6 "2014-01-16T16:51:29Z")
Depends, if they are videos of your cats, then they will definitely be around forever. ---
**Author:** ![runningdude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e9c0ed/32.png) [@runningdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/runningdude)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2014, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-trust-youtube-to-keep-my-videos/678906/7 "2014-01-16T18:40:28Z")
I think you can enable downloading of videos on your own page. ---
**Author:** ![Hail\_Ants](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/dc4da7/32.png) [@Hail\_Ants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hail_Ants)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2014, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-trust-youtube-to-keep-my-videos/678906/8 "2014-01-17T15:14:24Z")
Another big reason to never use or even think of YouTube as a place to ‘backup’ your videos: YouTube immediately converts all uploaded content to a highly compressed format (mostly FLV or MP4). Therefore if you re-download them you’ll have (permanently) lost a significant amount of quality. Use iCloud and/or iTunes for backing up…