Spain is world champion again. And one of the questions that struck me this morning was how complicated it is, paradoxically, to find specific moments from this 2026 World Cup as opposed to how easy it is to locate those from the 2010 World Cup.
It is a question that has nothing to do with the scoreboard but with how the Internet has evolved. In 16 years… will it be as easy to find the moments of 2026 as it is now to find those of 2010?
The panoramic. In 2010, YouTube was the home of online video. Any recording of the South Africa final, made with TV or mobile cameras, ended up uploaded there, indexed on a platform designed to locate specific videos, with title and date.
In 2026 that exercise is more difficult, and that difficulty is going to get worse. The video no longer lives in one place, now it also lives on TikTok, on Instagram, in private accounts, in stories that disappear after 24 hours, in whatsapp groups that never reach the search engine.
Why is it important. We assume that we record and share more than ever, so we assume that everything is archived somewhere. It’s not like that. A fan records the goal from the stands with his cell phone, uploads it to TikTokgoes viral, a TV cuts it out for its news citing the source… and there the trail ends.
- That video may never make it to YouTube.
- The account that uploaded it may be private.
- It may not be easy to locate later using the TikTok search engine.
- And there may never be a record of that shot anywhere else.
Between the lines. All platforms have become video platforms, but each one has a different purpose and editorial line, and that makes finding something specific a more complex task. Or impossible.
It is a phenomenon similar to what has happened with text search, although for different reasons: content and communities have been divided into fragments that do not communicate with each other. The rise of newsletterscommunities locked in Discord or Telegram, etc.
- A centralized search engine indexes text designed to be found.
- An ephemeral video app indexes immediate attention, but not long-term memory.
They are opposite design goals.
Yes, but. For the occasional user it is much more difficult to locate moments in this atomization. For the user hooked on specific platforms, it is not so much because they know how to navigate them and know where to look within each one.
That means that the problem is not only technological, but also one of skill and time invested in learning the logic of each application.
And now what. In 16 years, someone will want to see moments from this World Cup, like the anthem played by tubas, or Ferran’s goal recorded from a very specific seat. If that video never reaches a platform with an archiving vocation, that person will find an empty space. The collective memory of that World Cup will largely depend on editorial decisions that none of the platforms involved took with the archive in mind, but rather with the minute in which that video retained attention.
In Xataka | Shy of the world, we are losing the Internet
Featured image | FIFA
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