Gfycat to Cease Operations on September 1st
Gfycat, the popular GIF database, is set to close down as its parent company, Snap, has announced plans to delete all user content within a few weeks. A notification on the Gfycat website states that the service will be discontinued, urging users to save or remove their content by logging into their accounts on the website. Starting from September 1, 2023, all Gfycat content and data will be permanently removed from gfycat.com.
The news of Gfycat’s impending demise will come as no surprise to anyone who has tried to use the site in recent months. In May, Motherboard announced that Snap had allowed Gfycat’s security certificates to expire. The control meant that the platform was temporarily unavailable to most internet users. However, even before that downtime, people were asking if anyone was still working at Gfycat. There are months and even years old reports on reddit about broken downloads and unresponsive support. The shutdown is a reminder that nothing lasts, not even one of the most popular websites on the Internet. It’s worth remembering because other platforms suffer from a different kind of neglect.
