Mourning a data loss

Notes on a new kind of grief, plus how you can take action to support LA journalism

Welcome to data+feelings! Before we begin, I want to call attention to the local news crisis in Los Angeles that has unfolded this week. Knock LA is fighting for editorial independence and better work conditions, both critical to their essential accountability reporting. Please send an email or post on social to support them. LA TACO, a beloved newsroom covering culture, community and food, needs to gain 3,500 new members in the next week in order to stay open. Subscribe now.

Last September, Google announced it would kill its beautiful app Google Podcasts. Date of death: April 2, 2024. For the past several weeks, there has been a large banner at the top reminding me of this execution date and that I should export my subscriptions. 

Two weeks ago it finally clicked that April 2 was days away. I had been trying to think about whether to export my podcast subscriptions or to embrace this as a moment of starting fresh. I could switch to another app and only add podcasts that I listen to, as opposed to the aspirational list I have curated. I decided to make a back-up just in case. 

And that’s when I realized all the rest of my data was gone.

The most important data is which episodes I have listened to and how far I have listened to any given podcast. I tend to randomly select episodes to listen to from shows with extensive backlogs. I have a sleep timer set when I listen so often I’ve only consumed half an episode.

All of this information I relied on the app to track. Frantic online searches and stalking Reddit posts have confirmed there is no way to save it. It will just disappear. 

How you are greeted if you attempt to visit podcasts.google.com

Grief and anger are entwined tightly together. Of all the tech data that companies track on us, this was one part that was actually useful to me and I’m barred from it. Presumably it is stored somewhere, I just can’t access it.

I said recently that time is one of my biggest luxuries, and this will impact that greatly. I have six years of podcast activity to sift through in my head now. I will have to open an episode, listen to the first few minutes, figure out if I recognize it, then possibly move on to the next. What a waste of brain power. I’m anxious thinking about the monotony of this task and how frustrating this process will be. And how it will be never-ending.

I feel like I lost a lot of agency. One suggestion online was to manually go through years of Google activity and mark individual episodes as completed on a new podcasting app. I considered that, only to find I have no activity data to speak of: I have the “web and app activity” tracking off. I toggled the setting ages ago because I didn’t want my locations or browsing history to be surveilled. 

I was shocked. How can it be all or nothing? Why do I have to consent to all my data being recorded and stored, not just the parts that benefit me? 

I’m feeling a level of deep loss about data I haven’t experienced before. This isn’t the first time I’ve been burned by Google — RIP Google Music and Stadia — but at least I was able to transfer my data to another service. (And in the case of Stadia, I got to keep some hardware.)

Part of me is struggling to accept an unintended consequence of being a proactive data steward. I’m mulling over other potential consequences, reviewing other apps where I might need to institute my own form of data gathering in case another precious tool goes dark. And then that leads to another burst of aggravation at the waste of time.

Tell me, friends: Have you ever grieved a loss of data? I’m used to mourning the lack of data we have on communities and raging against the power structures that consider certain information unworthy of archiving. But this feels so much more personal, like a relationship has been violated. 

Quick hits

1. I said I would write weekly but then I got really sick and had to travel and got out of my groove BUT I’M BACK NOW THANK YOU!

2. Please take some time to explore the work of The 19th’s amazing fellows — Merdie, Eshe, Darreonna, Racquel and Victoria — who are all rockstars and on the job market!

3. Eid Mubarak! I loved reading this article about a queer iftar from Nisa Khan at KQED — plus, isn’t Naan Biryanis such a fun band name?

4. Sometimes you just wake up with a song in your head and today that is “Loudspeaker” by MUNA for me (every time i don’t shut up it’s revolution)

5. I wrote about why some LGBTQ+ groups are still concerned about how the Kids Online Safety Act could be used to censor queer people online

6. How the Army is using video games to appeal to teens, detailed by Rosa Schwartzburg in The Guardian

7. Hansi Lo Wang wrote about big changes to how the U.S. Census will ask about race and ethnicity for NPR — with implications for MENA, Armenian and Afro-Latine communities 

8. My incredible colleagues at The 19th Mel Leonor Barclay and Barbara Rodriguez examine how the imagery of white women victims is being used to stoke anti-immigrant fear

9. Loved this article by Jyoti Madhusoodanan on why Asian American health data needs to be disaggregated — something I think about a lot!

10. Lucas Waldron and Heather Vogell at ProPublica made a very cool news graphic illustrating the fight over how to regulate toddler milk, as told by track changes in the policy document

Don’t forget to support Knock LA and subscribe to LA TACO. 

💜 Jasmine