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In brief: The British video sharing website LiveLeak has been closed down after 15 years of existence. The founder Hayden Hewit announced the site’s closure on Twitter and revealed a new project, ItemFix. According to the founder, one of the primary reasons behind closing the site might have been the cost of hosting it.
Founded in 2006 by Hayden Hewit and the rest of the team behind the gore site Ogrish, LiveLeak made a lot of headlines because of the content it hosted. This content included children fighting, explicit footage of Saddam Hussein’s execution, and the beheading of American journalist and reporter James Foley, among others.
Despite being mostly known for the extreme and explicit videos it hosted and the controversy generated around them, LiveLeak’s focus was to show real footage of politics, war, and many other events and promote a culture of citizen journalism.
As of May 5, the site has been shut down and succeeded by ItemFix, a new project from Hayden’s team. The new site looks very similar to other content sharing platforms, allowing users to post and edit videos, images, and audio. Unlike LiveLeak, ItemFix will be much more restrictive as to what content users can upload.
Of course they will. As they should if that’s what they’re after. ItemFix isn’t a replacement. As for keeping LL up, the very pressures of doing what were a large part of the reason for moving on. It wasn’t exactly a WordPress blog on $2.99 hosting 🙂
— Hayden Hewitt (@HaydenHewitt) May 6, 2021
In what seems to be a farewell letter to all LiveLeak users, Hayden explained why they decided to move away from the project. Hayden stated that he “felt LiveLeak had achieved all that it could and it was time for us to try something new and exciting.”
Hayden also explained that another reason for closing down the site was related to the hosting costs. As it seems, LiveLeak “wasn’t exactly a WordPress blog on $2.99 hosting.”
The blogging platform Altfeed, another of Hayden’s projects, has also been opened up again. The site is currently undergoing a “major upgrade,” adding new features to improve the user experience.
Masthead credit: Mashable
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