Re:Medium tries to prevent people reading deleted articles o...
by Bartweiss on Tuesday May 01, 2018 @04:56PM
(#16971522)
> if someone publishes an article, it is nice to be able to see it again in the future.
I think there's an important point here about the difference between access and attribution. People talking about the right to be forgotten are generally opposed to attribution - someone like the top-level poster wants to be able to un-claim a blog post. But people talking about archiving are split between attribution and access - wanting to simply be able to see content, regardless of where it came from.
Two of my favorite bloggers have deleted large swathes of their work, both for reasons I think are inapplicable to me. In one case, they got a job in medicine and removed lots of content that might be unoffensive generally, but could upset a hospital HR department. In the other case, I believe she was worried about the impact her work might have on suicidal people.
In each case, the author wanted to stop having a comprehensive, owned body of their writing, while I simply wanted access to the text. I could give a damn if they accept ownership of that writing - it had interesting ideas and I simply want to be able to read it again.
This isn't a distinction I see made often; work is either in its source location or archived in an attributed way. But there are some cases where I'd be quite happy to get un-attributed access to the actual content someone created.
I think there's an important point here about the difference between access and attribution. People talking about the right to be forgotten are generally opposed to attribution - someone like the top-level poster wants to be able to un-claim a blog post. But people talking about archiving are split between attribution and access - wanting to simply be able to see content, regardless of where it came from.
Two of my favorite bloggers have deleted large swathes of their work, both for reasons I think are inapplicable to me. In one case, they got a job in medicine and removed lots of content that might be unoffensive generally, but could upset a hospital HR department. In the other case, I believe she was worried about the impact her work might have on suicidal people.
In each case, the author wanted to stop having a comprehensive, owned body of their writing, while I simply wanted access to the text. I could give a damn if they accept ownership of that writing - it had interesting ideas and I simply want to be able to read it again.
This isn't a distinction I see made often; work is either in its source location or archived in an attributed way. But there are some cases where I'd be quite happy to get un-attributed access to the actual content someone created.