If you looked at how data is lost online, you'd find out that by far the most obvious and immediate cause of data loss was third-party intermediaries shutting down old sites. For example, when Yahoo! decided to burn down Geocities - and shittons of early Internet history - on the basis of saving some hosting and storage costs. A second cause is neglect; say, you move your blog to a new platform, but you don't bother redirecting the old URLs, so now you've just carved a hundred or so new dead links into other people's content. In both of those cases, data wasn't being deliberately removed because it needed to go - it just happened by accident.
Furthermore, we don't usually know when these accidents happen. Yes, occasionally some intermediary announces it in advance, but often times linked sites just die. This is a phenomenon known as link rot, and it can happen for a whole host of accidental reasons. Try going to a 10 year old news article and clicking on any of the links, or going to a decades-old forum thread and looking at any of the images. Count how many of them still work. It's depressingly low.
Now, try to imagine getting consent to archive in advance from people who do not know or care about the problems I've just mentioned. You won't get very far - not because the archiving is harmful to them but because most people do not understand the problem. People don't backup their own shit until after they've already lost heaps of data. Even in situations like the Geocities shutdown, the logistics of actually asking for permission to archive on top of running a bunch of scrapers to actually do the archival is... complicated. You could do it, but the vast majority of data would go unarchived purely due to an inability to locate the owner of the data.
Too much gets lost too easily.
It is something that I've thought about - the contradiction between privacy and the need to communicate yourself to the generations to come and the broadcast into the void it requires. If your friend is okay with his privacy in the archives, he might be glad to know that in hundred years, there will be an AI whose PHD will be on the emotional significance of new technologies in the lives of early adopters of the Internet, the case of user John Smith 1988.
Yes Usenet used to gave a spool lifetime, but that was clearly variable and there were no guarantees about it. Anybody could set up a mirror and frequently did. Also anyone could copy out content to other media and there was no expectation that they couldn’t do that.
We are all responsible for what we post to other people and in some cases also the effect it has on them. Consider bullying, abuse, criminal conspiracy, the record of receiving a message belongs to the receiver not the sender.
connect with people and work through some pretty heavy emotional challenges
is a goodmine and insight into history.
I don't think we give a lot of weight to what the original publishing intent was for anything published 100, 200 years ago, why would the change in the future?
Without publishing it rather becomes tomb raiding even after thousands of years
https://m.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/google-ceo-eric-schmid...
* It's ironic I'm referring to a 10yr old piece to refer to the danger of continuous archives.
https://nerocam.com/DrFun/Dave/Dr-Fun/df200108/df20010808.jp...
If you are not familiar with Dr. Fun: Don Knuth Finally Sells Out https://nerocam.com/DrFun/Dave/Dr-Fun/df200002/df20000210.jp...
In the early days of the Internet, I often used to Google/AltaVista/Jeeves my own name. There used to be quite a few hits. Over the years, those old hits have just faded away.
If you can't find it, it's effectively the same as if it doesn't exist.
People don't live or structure their lives to satisfy historians...
In my experience it's strongly tied to personal experience: if I committed a transgression in my past I'm going to be more understanding towards others doing the same (still depending on the nature of the transgression and my rationalization of it). It's also worth nothing that what constitutes a transgression changes with the times, and often the public seem to forget/ignore this fact and retroactively apply stigma and resentment.
I think your statement was already implicit in what I was saying. We should move on to the next bit where I say "But..." and you counter it.
The ease in which one can find clues and solutions to decades old technical questions relies on everything being stored.
And more than just technical issues - I'm no historian but I've wasted endless hours following fascinating discussions from the past that suddenly become relevent because of recent events or unforeseen connections. I love how much is preserved by accident. It makes me slightly sad to think that it might be otherwise and that others would wish it otherwise.
The idea of everything you've ever posted becoming part of a giant "digital permanent record" used by data brokers, advertisers, credit bureaus, trolls, nosy people, etc. is somewhat unappealing.
Phase 1: hall monitor trolls in coordination with HR use it to keep people in line
Phase 2: the archive is rediscovered as truth about what the world used to be like and suppressed
Phase 3: there is no archive and never was
Phase 4: the archive is rediscovered, hidden and the esoteric knowledge used to start a cult
Phase 5: the cult eventually prevails in society, becomes a religion and suppresses inconvenient parts of the archive
Phase 6: well history repeats itself so why go on?