Search used to be better, so it’s hard to tell sometimes. I just checked one of the first sites I ever visited and the content is still there. Thankfully they put up a web portal because it used to be an FTP site… and Firefox no longer has an integrated FTP client.
But some stuff doesn’t translate to the future very well, it is more-medium dependent than text, or files with text. Take flash, which has recently been effectively eradicated. Not everyone updates their stuff, and eventually it is either collected by a preservation effort (like archive.org) or lost to time. I am betting Discord will blackhole much of the current era’s community knowledge some day. Much of that is just text, but it’s bound up in posts on servers that require accounts and invites, and that is just the kind of media complexity that fosters dependence. Which I am sure is no accident.
Getting back to ephemeral content, there is also the ephemeral medium. Like certain internet fora. Some content perpetuates forever because it is forever reposted, but much of it expires quickly. I think even this is healthier than the Discord model, since you know it’s going away unless regenerated, and a sudden bankruptcy isn’t going to create an abrupt void in available knowledge.
Then you get weird hybrids, like GitHub, being the default choice for public source code hosting, and having a policy of expiring untended repos. Combine that with MS’s adoption of Twitter’s “we suspended your account as pretext to collect your phone number” tactic and this is already killing off public repositories.
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