Let the Platforms Burn
Let the Platforms Burn
when they burned the library of Alexandria the crowd cheered in horrible joy. They understood that there was something older than wisdom, and it was fire, and something truer than words, and it was ashes
- @yurirando, 2022
i understand the schadenfreude of watching these awful companies collapse, i really do. i experience it as well. but i can't help but baulk at how much data is being lost. assuming 99% of it is worthless, that's still millions of ideas that are lost forever.
a few years ago there were (albeit obviously wrong at the time, but nevertheless) questions about "is this the last generation of archæology? all info is now stored forever on the internet" - and now, countless links go to a facebook page i need to log in to see, or a tweet that's unreachable because twitter's ddos'ed itself. years of tech support on reddit, and anonymously uploaded art on imgur. the work web.archive.org and archive.is are doing is invaluable, but it will never be enough.
i want to watch the corporations burn too. but we're losing something we'll never get back.
i want to watch the corporations burn too. but we’re losing something we’ll never get back.
This perfectly highlights the precarious situation we are in. We have collectively decided to put A LOT of Internet history on a few centralized places that don't really care about data as profit, and now it is coming back to bite us in the rear. We will lose a lot of history that we can never easily get back, whether it is deleted, or siloed behind a login/paywall screen.
Take, for example, Twitter burning down. It affects everyone negatively. Think of all the important conversations going on about race, gender, sexuality, and protests and movements, that will be lost to time. Think of all the artist who have posted work on there, only to discover they have to shift to a new platform literally overnight because no one can see their artwork and there is a mass exodus. Think of how good reputable news sources are becoming even more fragmented as reputable, trustworthy actors flee Twitter, turning it into a swamp of misinformation and disinformation.
Now take this scenario, and spread it across all the major sites, keeping in mind how all sites rely on each other to be useful, so damage becomes exponentially worse as more large sites decide to do restrictive policies that trap users and data within their sites. As a result, information cannot travel as freely between boundaries. Now taking into account all the damage that has been done, the Internet won't be the frontier of possibility and community as it once was, but rather another cash cow, and medium of distribution: it will become like a more interactive version of TV.
I wish we could go back to the mid 2000s/early 2010s era of the Internet...I miss those days... Sorry for doom ranting a little, it's just the Internet as a concept is important to me.
i used to ridicule people for posting on twitter and facebook saying how ephemeral it was and what's the point of putting everything in a walled garden. now reddit's gone to shit and i feel a fool. turns out it's not as open as it appeared to be
i really hope this catalyses many people into going back to their own websites and using rss. i know they're still not that permanent, but at least if your site host turns to shit you can pack up and leave.
Typical digital media is ridiculously short lived compared to everything else humanity has used to store information so far. Five years? Ten? Conserving any digital data is this act of juggling where if you drop the ball it's gone; you're constantly replicating and updating. We see the "cloud" as some bulletproof storage but long term it's up in the air really.
I pulled an antique Apple2][ clone (Franklin 2100) out of storage the other day along with some old floppy disks. I was shocked when it fired right up and could still read my homework project from 1990. So while it is possible to recover old data off of ancient media, it is highly impractical to keep the required hardware in working order forever.
We see the “cloud” as some bulletproof storage but long term it’s up in the air really.
A+ pun, intended or not
Damn this comment is giving me Talos Principle Road to Gehenna vibes
thanks, i think. i always felt that talos principle was too deep for me.
either that or it thought it was deeper than it actually was, i could never tell
I even found an old diary entry of mine today that linked to one of my own facebook posts, and that link had already rotted. Ugh.
For the ones that don't like medium, https://scribe.rip/@doctorow/let-the-platforms-burn-6fb3e6c0d980 (it's just an alternative frontend)
I was about to post a snarky comment about how you should link to Cory's own blog pluralistic.net instead of medium but it seems this article isn't on pluralistic (yet?)
Week later edit: it got posted to pluralistic finally.
Yeah, that Medium paywall is getting really old 😑