This is something that keeps me worried at night. Unlike other historical artefacts like pottery, vellum writing, or stone tablets, information on the Internet can just blink into nonexistence when the server hosting it goes offline. This makes it difficult for future anthropologists who want to study our history and document the different Internet epochs. For my part, I always try to send any news article I see to an archival site (like archive.ph) to help collectively preserve our present so it can still be seen by others in the future.

  • soiling@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    re: static content

    How does authentication factor into this? even if we exclude marketing/tracking bullshit, there is a very real concern on many sites about people seeing the data they’re allowed to see. There are even legal requirements. If that data (such as health records) is statically held in a blockchain such that anyone can access it by its hash, privacy evaporates, doesn’t it?