alt Hacker NewsI wasn't a regular there beyond from occasional search hits. But presumably heavy users would want their contributions preserved in a way that's still useful for the type of people they wrote them for in the first place. An archive.org or torrent copy means they still technically exist, but not in a way that's helpful in a practical way.
It'd be like if Wikipedia suddenly closed down tomorrow -- prolific editors would take cold comfort from being told their contributions are still available to anybody who downloads an obscure multi-gigabyte archive file.
We must take the world as it is and not as we would like it to be. Apple’s hosting of it has come to an end, but there are trivial ways to continue to preserve and serve the information. It is what it is. I prefer defaulting to action instead of helplessness, other opinions will differ.
If someone wants to build a spiritual successor, build it on AT Proto to prevent potential loss due to corporate actions in the future. A PDS for storage, a post per topic/thread, etc. Due to the inherent open nature of the social rails AT Proto offers, this enables robust, open consumption of the data by future prospective consumers, humans and agents alike. I’ll cover reasonable infrastructure costs. It’ll all be ingested by the Internet Archive for preservation.
Broadly speaking, intentional effort must go into cultivating and curating systems in this regard. The platform must be open and sustainably operated, and contributors and curators must be valued for their thankless, tireless, unpaid work. Like Wikipedia.