this post was submitted on 27 May 2024
296 points (96.0% liked)
Technology
78705 readers
4867 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I understand all that, but I can almost positively assure you that my shitposting isn't super important to have saved, other than for personal reasons. I have a backup of my site from the time, I've held onto it, for sure. But after I die, I'd really rather it stop existing, just like I do.
And we really don't need to remember every business that started and failed within two years. I certainly don't see a great reason to document my dad's shitty used car salesman antics of my youth with his own business. It's honestly also best forgotten by time. There's more worthwhile and prolific con-men to write about and keep documentation thereof.
And frankly, if I don't want my past to be on the internet forever, that should be my choice. Just like in the past, pre-internet-and-computers, if I didn't want to share my writings with anyone before I died, I could burn them properly to make sure they were lost to time.
My original intent was literally meant as a Devil's Advocate counter-point to the point of the article. Sure, we can't tell from where we sit what's important to the future... so maybe trying to save everything is a fools errand to begin with, since we don't know what's worthwhile to save? Saving literally everything for the sake of the future seems ill-considered. Once again, I assure you my shitposting with my friends really isn't all that important culturally or socially.
EDIT: Also this is a cute philosophical 180 degree turn from 14 years ago when numerous scientists, philosophers, and organizations were positively up-in-arms and scared about the prospect of the internet meaning "the end of forgetting" and not being able to move on from your past and grow as a person because your past life on the internet would always come back to haunt you.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/magazine/25privacy-t2.html
Previously, we panicked because everything was going to be online forever!!!! Ohhh spooky, dangerous!!
Now, we're panicked because nothing is going to be online forever!!!! Ohhh toospooky, dangerous!!
Oh, humans, never stop humaning.
You probably responded before I made my edit, but do you remember how 14 years ago there was actually a lot of worry about how things on the internet would be around forever and how that would change society?
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/magazine/25privacy-t2.html
Because it's interesting that now the other side of the coin seems to be the primary concern. Previously we were considering expiration dates on data and deep user control. Now the attitude seems to be the opposite, that it shouldn't be up to the user, but up to the archivist.
The real issue is that we seem to be purging all the wrong things.
Useful answer to technical question? Gone five years later.
Unfounded and fraudulent accusation that some teenager in Albuquerque committed a hideous crime? Preserved for the ages. Revenge porn photos? Also preserved, although possibly without the attributions.
Although, really, all of that is human nature too: we conserve what draws the attention of the average mook, not what specialists find useful.