Practical techniques HERE TODAY, GONE TOMORROW: PRESERVING ONLINE VIDEOS AND PHOTOS Imagine you’ve found and verified an online video that clearly exposes a violation. The video has the potential to strengthen a case or advocacy campaign you are working on, so you save the link. A few days later, the video is gone… Online videos and photos can disappear quickly, especially if they are graphic or deal with sensitive human rights issues. From January to June 2015, YouTube took down over 5,700 videos due to government requests alone. This is why you should never treat online platforms as data storage units. Videos can be deleted by the uploader or by the platform for any number of reasons, including a violation of terms of service, user complaints, copyright infringement, account cancellation, or if the platform as a whole shuts down. Preserving online content such as photos and videos, including their metadata, will ensure that you can access it in the future, help maintain research integrity, enable you to catalogue the data, and establish a chain of custody for use in legal settings. 48 How to download Googling ‘download Facebook video’ reveals a number of free tools, such as VideoVault, for preserving online photos and videos, also known as “scraping”. There are also browser plugins and custom scripts available for downloading large amounts of content. Be aware that scraping content violates the terms and conditions of many sites. It is important to be responsible about how you save, share, and credit/link to the original uploader or content creator. Beware: there could be malicious trojans in scraping software that, when downloaded, can cause damage to your data and privacy. Look for open-source software that has good reviews, and always download software directly from the developer’s site or trusted source. Your online activities are not anonymous. To avoid surveillance that targets human rights work, consider using a VPN when searching for and downloading sensitive materials.