remember kids, everything you post on the internet stays forever*
*unless it cannot be monetized anymore
Everything you post has potential to remain forever even if it’s not monetized directly. Cautioning people about it makes sense now and has always made sense.
Don’t worry, it might still bubble up to the surface in the hallucinations of an AI.
54% of Wikipedia pages contain at least one link in their “References” section that points to a page that no longer exists.
It would be interesting to know how many of these references don’t exist anymore and how many have just moved. Web has come a very long way since 2013 and I bet that websites hosting the references have undergone several iterations altering the URLs in some way.
That, in and of itself, is also a problem! First of all, because such pages often fail to return a HTTP 301 moved permanently response, and second (but perhaps even more importantly) the reason they move is because the site transitioned from using static, human-readable URLs to some kind of unstable CMS-managed non-descriptive gibberish that breaks caching and linking. It’s an intentional siloing and hoarding of content.
The online era is going to be a thousand Library of Alexandria’s worth of lost information, records, journals, news, … everything. It will all just digital-rot into the memory hole.
I wonder how this compares the the number of businesses that existed in 2013 that no longer exist. I wonder for two reasons:
- Is 38% similar to the typical rate of failure for businesses and other ventures?
- How much of the 38% can be explained by closure of high-risk businesses like restaurants?
Something else that could explain a lot of it is webpages that were always intended to be ephemeral. Political campaign websites for instance.
Also… I once created hellblade.com. We sold gaming computers with cases that changed colour with heat in the UK. Was a total disaster. Now it’s some big game franchise. Wish I’d kept the domain.
Yeah i often wonder… Would they have changed the name of the game, paid me off, or done something like hellbladegame.com.
disgusting. it’s like early TV where people thought it was low-rent crap and not worth saving.
it always seems impractical to store this stuff but then it goes away and you realize how much you’re missing.
