alt Hacker NewsWould it make sense to archive every word every person ever speaks? At what point does archiving everything people do constrain their ability to live freely in the present?
Despite being in written form (decreasingly so), social media feels more like a private conversation in a public space - and like all such conversations, it deserves the right to decay, so that we do not all become prisoners of the dumbest thing we ever said.
The transformative work of curation - choosing which pieces to save, to turn into books, diary entries, or blog posts that record context for posterity - is a valid part of how archivists build the corpus of history. Harvesting all the raw data simply because we can is a dangerous road.
>social media feels more like a private conversation in a public space
Then it wasn't very smart of you to post something publicly then.
You should be able to choose what things you want public or private, but if your intention is for public, I don't think you should be able to delete it. You can make amendments to what you say, but you shouldn't be granted the ability to choose what other people remember. Otherwise, private conversations or just saying nothing are alternatives.
>At what point does archiving everything people do constrain their ability to live freely in the present?
The point at which information you intended to post privately is made public without your permission.