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I'm not sure how I feel about this. Over the last couple years it has become increasingly clear that public personal social media history is a liability. Peopl

I'm not sure how I feel about this. Over the last couple years it has become increasingly clear that public personal social media history is a liability. People's histories have often been weaponized against them, and mass processing of social media has been used as a weapon against society as a whole (Cambridge Analytica, etc.). I recently deleted my Facebook account, but didn't take the time to delete Google+ because I figured it was about to disappear anyway. But now it turns out some people are building a public archive of my content, and presumably they aren't going to give me a way to delete it. This makes me uncomfortable. I have now deleted my Google+ history; I hope they didn't get much of it. To be clear, I think the Internet Archive is good people with noble intentions. But given what we've learned recently about social media possibly being a huge mistake... this effort worries me.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
Yeah, I'll probably put in a removal request for my G+ profile as well. I hadn't the heart to delete it myself, but I was looking forward to the social history purge that the shutdown represented. Obviously I have a Takeout download with my own content, but I don't really see any need for the Internet Archive to maintain a copy of it.
- cromwellian 8y ago
  They can only archive your public posts. Maybe if people were afraid their posts might be read in the future and tied to them they’d stop shitposting so much and only post content they’d be proud of. Internet social media is full of some the most vile verbal diarrhea to come out of the human species, enabled by actual anonymity or beliefs in obscurity that others won’t find what they said. It’s reached a head now with all of this radicalization leading to neofascist terrorism and what’s being asked is for all online platforms to start censoring shitposting. I’d say this removes the primary social feedback mechanism that has existed in human culture: the fear of tit for tat repercussions in the future based on past bad behavior. Perhaps there’s something to be said about holding people To their words. I’ve been in the internet posting since 1986, I’ve said some crazy shit during my teenage years as a dick headed devotee of Ayn Rand, but I don’t want to delete them, I don’t think it’s honest or brave. There are legit reasons for anonymity like violence of course but this isn’t the norm. We need to find ways to promote and protect people who need anonymity while also not encouraging the worst human behavior and abuse online as it seems the alternatives are either self censorship based civility or actual censorship and I prefer The former.
  - metildaa 8y ago
    A lack of anonimity has not notably improved the discourse on YouTube, if anything the real name policy has silenced many that would push back against the verbal diarrhoea, as the person who wrote said insane post might easily hunt you down now.
    - cromwellian 8y ago
      YouTube is pseudonymous, most people don’t use real names But point taken. It seems like ultimately this ends up with most platforms shutting down comments or curating everything which is a damn shame place to end up from the internet I started on, but maybe that was a false sample being mostly academics and geeks in the 80s and early 90s.
  - syshum 8y ago
    Anonymity and Free Speech go hand in hand, you can not have one with out the other. If you are in the US, then you should understand that Anonymous Speech was the bed rock foundation of this nation, most of the discourse around the constitution was done via anonymous pseudonyms. The Reality is "Real Names Policies" promote extremism, it does not reduce it. Real Names Policies further create eco chambers, Group isolation, and destroy discourse. This idea that Anonymous Speech is the cause of extremist is plainly false given that most of the violent extremists post for abhorrent beliefs under their real identities. Most Anonymous speakers are actually centrists want to engage in debate with out fear of retribution by the extremist on both sides. To remove that, is to remove the rational voices and only allow the extremist to yell at each other
    - cromwellian 8y ago
      I used to believe that with all my heart until I started reading 4chan, now between that, deepfakes, and the imminent arrival of GPT-2 bots, I’m really fearful of the future of online publishing. We’re going to end up with defacto censorship because most if not all platforms will be threatened into it. Fundamentally it seems online discussion for human beings has serious bugs. Self policing used to work in the early internet but it seems the volume has overwhelmed most self policing systems.
ghaff 8y ago
The Internet Archive pretty much bends over backward to accommodate any remotely legitimate removal request--in part because the legal status of archiving copyrighted content is a bit of a gray area. (Yes, they're an archive/library but it's still a gray area with digital media.) There's definitely a tension between preserving the historical content of the web for future generations given that companies and the content they host come and go and letting rot occur naturally. Some of that rot is (almost) unquestionably bad to the degree it's an important part of the historical record. But many people also have an understandable desire to not have every public utterance they've made on the Internet tied to them for all time. And anonymity is rarely guaranteed. Personally, I'm happy that pretty much everything about me that's on the Web per-adulthood filtered through an editor first. BTW, Archive Team is not the same as Internet Archive but they can mostly be treated as equivalent for this purpose.
- paulddraper 8y ago
  > accommodate any remotely legitimate removal request What counts as legitimate? There's a lot of historical hypocrisy or inaccuracy from public figures and even news organizations. If you can't remember who said what, and when, I fear an Animal Farm future, where "no one could any longer remember" things, and historical perspective is lost in the internet fad of the moment.
  - danso 8y ago
    FWIW, there have been occasions where the IA has overridden its general policy to abide by the wishes of the domain/content owner. Joy Reid's (of MSNBC) blog is a recent example that comes to mind: https://blog.archive.org/2018/04/24/addressing-recent-claims-of-manipulated-blog-posts-in-the-wayback-machine/ https://blog.archive.org/2018/04/24/addressing-recent-claims... > We let Reid’s lawyers know that the information provided was not sufficient for us to verify claims of manipulation. Consequently, and due to Reid’s being a journalist (a very high-profile one, at that) and the journalistic nature of the blog archives, we declined to take down the archives. We were clear that we would welcome and consider any further information that they could provide us to support their claims. In the past years, IA has said that it would ignore robots.txt directives when it came to government and military domains: https://blog.archive.org/2016/12/17/robots-txt-gov-mil-websites/ https://blog.archive.org/2016/12/17/robots-txt-gov-mil-websi... > The Internet Archive is collecting webpages from over 6,000 government domains, over 200,000 hosts, and feeds from around 10,000 official federal social media accounts. Some have asked if we ignore URL exclusions expressed in robots.txt files. The answer is a bit complicated. Historically, sometimes yes and sometimes no; but going forward the answer is “even less so.”
whereistimbo 8y ago
If you read the linked post you will find out this section: If you don't want this to happen, you can request removal of specific items through the Internet Archive's procedure: https://help.archive.org/hc/en-us/articles/360018138951-How-do-I-remove-an-item-page-from-the-site- https://help.archive.org/hc/en-us/articles/360018138951-How-...
- acct1771 8y ago
  and that, like Wikipedia's convoluted editing qualifications, calls into question whether the apparatus is capable of housing great bias on a multitude of topics.
  - duxup 8y ago
    I'm not sure what you mean by that. They're removing, presumably just your data (you can't just ask them to delete it all I'm guessing) at your request.
- zepearl 8y ago
  I don't understand part of the guide that says: > To have your item pages removed, please email info@archive.org from the email address used to upload the files. What does "...from the email address used to upload the files" mean? If my posts in Google+ are "archived", >>I<< do not have an email address which was used to upload the Google+ contents... . What am I misunderstanding/overlooking ? Thx
  - duxup 8y ago
    Presumably there is a gmail account that is associated with the post on Google+?
    - dredmorbius 8y ago
      In this case, the email association is with an Internet Archive account for organisations and individuals who are directly contributing to the Archive. There is also a DMCA request process, which I've posted to this thread.
jasonvorhe 8y ago
If you don't want your content to be public, why post it publicly? It's not like Google+ made it very difficult to give you options about the scope of visibility of your posts.
- ehsankia 8y ago
  Who you are now is very different than who you were 10 years ago, and unfortunately, that's a level of nuance that internet crowds don't quite grasp. Yes, in hindsight you would go back and clear out your own content, but we all know that rarely happens.
  - jefftk 8y ago
    > Who you are now is very different than who you were 10 years ago nit: G+ is only seven years old (Disclosure: I work at Google, though not on Plus)
    - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
      Sure, but in three years, comments you made on Google+ when it opened will be ten years old. In fact, the fact that G+ is closing after 7 years highlights that it's death keeps your online presence somewhat current, whereas it's long-term preservation past that natural 7 year life will maintain it much longer than perhaps relevant and valuable.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  It is impossible to know in advance all possible implications of an action or information. Especially at scale, whether of data, populations, or time.
aboutruby 8y ago
archive.org is already used for sharing deleted tweets and deleted reddit posts/comments for instance.
phoe-krk 8y ago
If you are European, I bet GDPR applies to them as well. Now that they have your data, they must have a way of allowing you to access it, review it, and request its removal.
thebooktocome 8y ago
You can send the Internet Archive a DMCA takedown request just like anybody else based in the US. Unlike most platforms, they seem to respond to them without a lawyer's letterhead.
- jononor 8y ago
  And if one is not based in the US?
  - raverbashing 8y ago
    Asking nicely goes a long way, and when it relates personal info I don't see why they wouldn't.
  - dredmorbius 8y ago
    https://help.archive.org/hc/en-us/articles/360018138951-How-do-I-remove-an-item-page-from-the-site- https://help.archive.org/hc/en-us/articles/360018138951-How-...
    - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
      I don't understand how that helps. Mail them from the same email you used to upload. "This must be the same email that you used to sign up to the Internet Archive". This appears to explain how to delete something I deliberately uploaded to archive.org. G+ archiving is done by an unknown someone else. A G+ user wanting to remove all their data, won't have uploaded to archive.org, or have an account there. Even if they did that account wouldn't be connected with the archiving that's going on.
      - dredmorbius 8y ago
        The Archive serves several functions, and the Wayback Machine's Web archive are only one of them. The link above addreses general removal requests. There is information specific to the Wayback Machine (WBM) here: https://help.archive.org/hc/en-us/articles/360004716091-Wayback-Machine-General-Information https://help.archive.org/hc/en-us/articles/360004716091-Wayb... Please note that I'm not a member of Archive.org nor the Archive Team, just someone very happy that they exist (as they assure me they are as well), and am providing information as best I can. The mechanisms of the Archive WBM and G+ mean that for your posts you can request removal of all items on or under your 21 digit numeric ProfileID, or, if you have one, a custom G+ URL. All post URLs will match the form "https://plus.google.com/<profileID>/posts/<postID>" https://plus.google.com/<profileID>/posts/<postID>" Some other content, such as images and multimedia will not, though tht's generally harder to find without post and profile links in the first place. If you have suggestions on improving the answers or remove process, please contact the Archive directly at info@archive.org or see their forums pages. I've found them quite responsive. https://archive.org/iathreads/forums.php https://archive.org/iathreads/forums.php
black-tea 8y ago
These people are building an archive and telling you about it. Numerous other entities have built archives and are not telling you about it. Furthermore, they have archives of everything you made "private" on Facebook/+. Hopefully you now better understand security and will not compromise information you wish to remain private in the future. But what's done is done. You can't revoke it once it's out there in plain text.
duxup 8y ago
I feel like once it is out there for someone to do bad things ... the archiving rules apply, and any concern about privacy is out the window already. Cat is out of the bag, not archiving it isn't going to help. It could in some cases help define what really was on someone's public facing profile on X date.
krapp 8y ago
>People's histories have often been weaponized against them (...) "often" is hyperbole. Most people's social media histories are never weaponized against them in any sense whatsoever.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  Most bullets fired in wartime, or mines (sea or land) laid never strike a target. They can have a profound effect on behaviour. Interestingly, that notion is one of the two uses of the word "invisible" in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. It's the very abitrarieness and randomness of consequences which is the primary mechanism of effectiveness: Regularity, order, and prompt obedience to command are qualities which, in modern armies, are of more importance towards determining the fate of battles than the dexterity and skill of the soldiers in the use of their arms. But the noise of firearms, the smoke, and the invisible death to which every man feels himself every moment exposed as soon as he comes within cannon-shot, and frequently a long time before the battle can be well said to be engaged, must render it very difficult to maintain any considerable degree of this regularity, order, and prompt obedience, even in the beginning of a modern battle. In an ancient battle there was no noise but what arose from the human voice; there was no smoke, there was no invisible cause of wounds or death. Every man, till some mortal weapon actually did approach him, saw clearly that no such weapon was near him. In these circumstances, and among troops who had some confidence in their own skill and dexterity in the use of their arms, it must have been a good deal less difficult to preserve some degree regularity and order, not only in the beginning, but through the whole progress of an ancient battle, and till one of the two armies was fairly defeated. But the habits of regularity, order, and prompt obedience to command can be acquired only by troops which are exercised in great bodies. https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_V/Chapter_1 https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_... (Actually, "invisible" is used twice in that passage, vs. once in the better-known, and grossly misrepresented, passage.)
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  I don't think it's about weaponization, so much as just regular privacy. Waybackmachine for corporate sites, NGOs, public information - I get. But G+ is essentially a social network. I don't think people really would chose to have that information arbitrarily saved. I don't want to have to tell some stranger on the other side of the planet to 'stop saving stuff about me'. I think the parent comment is apt, and I don't think we need to be saving the information on social networks unless there's something specifically (not casually) public about it.
gerdesj 8y ago
"To be clear, I think the Internet Archive is good people with noble intentions" No they are not that at all - they are not good nor noble. They are dispassionate observers and recorders. That is the intent (I think)

ocdtrekkie 8y ago

Yeah, I'll probably put in a removal request for my G+ profile as well. I hadn't the heart to delete it myself, but I was looking forward to the social history purge that the shutdown represented. Obviously I have a Takeout download with my own content, but I don't really see any need for the Internet Archive to maintain a copy of it.

cromwellian 8y ago
They can only archive your public posts. Maybe if people were afraid their posts might be read in the future and tied to them they’d stop shitposting so much and only post content they’d be proud of. Internet social media is full of some the most vile verbal diarrhea to come out of the human species, enabled by actual anonymity or beliefs in obscurity that others won’t find what they said. It’s reached a head now with all of this radicalization leading to neofascist terrorism and what’s being asked is for all online platforms to start censoring shitposting. I’d say this removes the primary social feedback mechanism that has existed in human culture: the fear of tit for tat repercussions in the future based on past bad behavior. Perhaps there’s something to be said about holding people To their words. I’ve been in the internet posting since 1986, I’ve said some crazy shit during my teenage years as a dick headed devotee of Ayn Rand, but I don’t want to delete them, I don’t think it’s honest or brave. There are legit reasons for anonymity like violence of course but this isn’t the norm. We need to find ways to promote and protect people who need anonymity while also not encouraging the worst human behavior and abuse online as it seems the alternatives are either self censorship based civility or actual censorship and I prefer The former.
- metildaa 8y ago
  A lack of anonimity has not notably improved the discourse on YouTube, if anything the real name policy has silenced many that would push back against the verbal diarrhoea, as the person who wrote said insane post might easily hunt you down now.
  - cromwellian 8y ago
    YouTube is pseudonymous, most people don’t use real names But point taken. It seems like ultimately this ends up with most platforms shutting down comments or curating everything which is a damn shame place to end up from the internet I started on, but maybe that was a false sample being mostly academics and geeks in the 80s and early 90s.
- syshum 8y ago
  Anonymity and Free Speech go hand in hand, you can not have one with out the other. If you are in the US, then you should understand that Anonymous Speech was the bed rock foundation of this nation, most of the discourse around the constitution was done via anonymous pseudonyms. The Reality is "Real Names Policies" promote extremism, it does not reduce it. Real Names Policies further create eco chambers, Group isolation, and destroy discourse. This idea that Anonymous Speech is the cause of extremist is plainly false given that most of the violent extremists post for abhorrent beliefs under their real identities. Most Anonymous speakers are actually centrists want to engage in debate with out fear of retribution by the extremist on both sides. To remove that, is to remove the rational voices and only allow the extremist to yell at each other
  - cromwellian 8y ago
    I used to believe that with all my heart until I started reading 4chan, now between that, deepfakes, and the imminent arrival of GPT-2 bots, I’m really fearful of the future of online publishing. We’re going to end up with defacto censorship because most if not all platforms will be threatened into it. Fundamentally it seems online discussion for human beings has serious bugs. Self policing used to work in the early internet but it seems the volume has overwhelmed most self policing systems.

ghaff 8y ago

The Internet Archive pretty much bends over backward to accommodate any remotely legitimate removal request--in part because the legal status of archiving copyrighted content is a bit of a gray area. (Yes, they're an archive/library but it's still a gray area with digital media.) There's definitely a tension between preserving the historical content of the web for future generations given that companies and the content they host come and go and letting rot occur naturally. Some of that rot is (almost) unquestionably bad to the degree it's an important part of the historical record. But many people also have an understandable desire to not have every public utterance they've made on the Internet tied to them for all time. And anonymity is rarely guaranteed. Personally, I'm happy that pretty much everything about me that's on the Web per-adulthood filtered through an editor first. BTW, Archive Team is not the same as Internet Archive but they can mostly be treated as equivalent for this purpose.

paulddraper 8y ago
> accommodate any remotely legitimate removal request What counts as legitimate? There's a lot of historical hypocrisy or inaccuracy from public figures and even news organizations. If you can't remember who said what, and when, I fear an Animal Farm future, where "no one could any longer remember" things, and historical perspective is lost in the internet fad of the moment.
- danso 8y ago
  FWIW, there have been occasions where the IA has overridden its general policy to abide by the wishes of the domain/content owner. Joy Reid's (of MSNBC) blog is a recent example that comes to mind: https://blog.archive.org/2018/04/24/addressing-recent-claims-of-manipulated-blog-posts-in-the-wayback-machine/ https://blog.archive.org/2018/04/24/addressing-recent-claims... > We let Reid’s lawyers know that the information provided was not sufficient for us to verify claims of manipulation. Consequently, and due to Reid’s being a journalist (a very high-profile one, at that) and the journalistic nature of the blog archives, we declined to take down the archives. We were clear that we would welcome and consider any further information that they could provide us to support their claims. In the past years, IA has said that it would ignore robots.txt directives when it came to government and military domains: https://blog.archive.org/2016/12/17/robots-txt-gov-mil-websites/ https://blog.archive.org/2016/12/17/robots-txt-gov-mil-websi... > The Internet Archive is collecting webpages from over 6,000 government domains, over 200,000 hosts, and feeds from around 10,000 official federal social media accounts. Some have asked if we ignore URL exclusions expressed in robots.txt files. The answer is a bit complicated. Historically, sometimes yes and sometimes no; but going forward the answer is “even less so.”

whereistimbo 8y ago

If you read the linked post you will find out this section: If you don't want this to happen, you can request removal of specific items through the Internet Archive's procedure: https://help.archive.org/hc/en-us/articles/360018138951-How-do-I-remove-an-item-page-from-the-site- https://help.archive.org/hc/en-us/articles/360018138951-How-...

acct1771 8y ago
and that, like Wikipedia's convoluted editing qualifications, calls into question whether the apparatus is capable of housing great bias on a multitude of topics.
- duxup 8y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean by that. They're removing, presumably just your data (you can't just ask them to delete it all I'm guessing) at your request.
zepearl 8y ago
I don't understand part of the guide that says: > To have your item pages removed, please email info@archive.org from the email address used to upload the files. What does "...from the email address used to upload the files" mean? If my posts in Google+ are "archived", >>I<< do not have an email address which was used to upload the Google+ contents... . What am I misunderstanding/overlooking ? Thx
- duxup 8y ago
  Presumably there is a gmail account that is associated with the post on Google+?
  - dredmorbius 8y ago
    In this case, the email association is with an Internet Archive account for organisations and individuals who are directly contributing to the Archive. There is also a DMCA request process, which I've posted to this thread.

jasonvorhe 8y ago

If you don't want your content to be public, why post it publicly? It's not like Google+ made it very difficult to give you options about the scope of visibility of your posts.

ehsankia 8y ago
Who you are now is very different than who you were 10 years ago, and unfortunately, that's a level of nuance that internet crowds don't quite grasp. Yes, in hindsight you would go back and clear out your own content, but we all know that rarely happens.
- jefftk 8y ago
  > Who you are now is very different than who you were 10 years ago nit: G+ is only seven years old (Disclosure: I work at Google, though not on Plus)
  - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
    Sure, but in three years, comments you made on Google+ when it opened will be ten years old. In fact, the fact that G+ is closing after 7 years highlights that it's death keeps your online presence somewhat current, whereas it's long-term preservation past that natural 7 year life will maintain it much longer than perhaps relevant and valuable.
dredmorbius 8y ago
It is impossible to know in advance all possible implications of an action or information. Especially at scale, whether of data, populations, or time.

aboutruby 8y ago

archive.org is already used for sharing deleted tweets and deleted reddit posts/comments for instance.

phoe-krk 8y ago

If you are European, I bet GDPR applies to them as well. Now that they have your data, they must have a way of allowing you to access it, review it, and request its removal.

thebooktocome 8y ago

You can send the Internet Archive a DMCA takedown request just like anybody else based in the US. Unlike most platforms, they seem to respond to them without a lawyer's letterhead.

jononor 8y ago
And if one is not based in the US?
- raverbashing 8y ago
  Asking nicely goes a long way, and when it relates personal info I don't see why they wouldn't.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  https://help.archive.org/hc/en-us/articles/360018138951-How-do-I-remove-an-item-page-from-the-site- https://help.archive.org/hc/en-us/articles/360018138951-How-...
  - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
    I don't understand how that helps. Mail them from the same email you used to upload. "This must be the same email that you used to sign up to the Internet Archive". This appears to explain how to delete something I deliberately uploaded to archive.org. G+ archiving is done by an unknown someone else. A G+ user wanting to remove all their data, won't have uploaded to archive.org, or have an account there. Even if they did that account wouldn't be connected with the archiving that's going on.
    - dredmorbius 8y ago
      The Archive serves several functions, and the Wayback Machine's Web archive are only one of them. The link above addreses general removal requests. There is information specific to the Wayback Machine (WBM) here: https://help.archive.org/hc/en-us/articles/360004716091-Wayback-Machine-General-Information https://help.archive.org/hc/en-us/articles/360004716091-Wayb... Please note that I'm not a member of Archive.org nor the Archive Team, just someone very happy that they exist (as they assure me they are as well), and am providing information as best I can. The mechanisms of the Archive WBM and G+ mean that for your posts you can request removal of all items on or under your 21 digit numeric ProfileID, or, if you have one, a custom G+ URL. All post URLs will match the form "https://plus.google.com/<profileID>/posts/<postID>" https://plus.google.com/<profileID>/posts/<postID>" Some other content, such as images and multimedia will not, though tht's generally harder to find without post and profile links in the first place. If you have suggestions on improving the answers or remove process, please contact the Archive directly at info@archive.org or see their forums pages. I've found them quite responsive. https://archive.org/iathreads/forums.php https://archive.org/iathreads/forums.php

black-tea 8y ago

These people are building an archive and telling you about it. Numerous other entities have built archives and are not telling you about it. Furthermore, they have archives of everything you made "private" on Facebook/+. Hopefully you now better understand security and will not compromise information you wish to remain private in the future. But what's done is done. You can't revoke it once it's out there in plain text.

duxup 8y ago

I feel like once it is out there for someone to do bad things ... the archiving rules apply, and any concern about privacy is out the window already. Cat is out of the bag, not archiving it isn't going to help. It could in some cases help define what really was on someone's public facing profile on X date.

krapp 8y ago

>People's histories have often been weaponized against them (...) "often" is hyperbole. Most people's social media histories are never weaponized against them in any sense whatsoever.

dredmorbius 8y ago
Most bullets fired in wartime, or mines (sea or land) laid never strike a target. They can have a profound effect on behaviour. Interestingly, that notion is one of the two uses of the word "invisible" in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. It's the very abitrarieness and randomness of consequences which is the primary mechanism of effectiveness: Regularity, order, and prompt obedience to command are qualities which, in modern armies, are of more importance towards determining the fate of battles than the dexterity and skill of the soldiers in the use of their arms. But the noise of firearms, the smoke, and the invisible death to which every man feels himself every moment exposed as soon as he comes within cannon-shot, and frequently a long time before the battle can be well said to be engaged, must render it very difficult to maintain any considerable degree of this regularity, order, and prompt obedience, even in the beginning of a modern battle. In an ancient battle there was no noise but what arose from the human voice; there was no smoke, there was no invisible cause of wounds or death. Every man, till some mortal weapon actually did approach him, saw clearly that no such weapon was near him. In these circumstances, and among troops who had some confidence in their own skill and dexterity in the use of their arms, it must have been a good deal less difficult to preserve some degree regularity and order, not only in the beginning, but through the whole progress of an ancient battle, and till one of the two armies was fairly defeated. But the habits of regularity, order, and prompt obedience to command can be acquired only by troops which are exercised in great bodies. https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_V/Chapter_1 https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_... (Actually, "invisible" is used twice in that passage, vs. once in the better-known, and grossly misrepresented, passage.)
sonnyblarney 8y ago
I don't think it's about weaponization, so much as just regular privacy. Waybackmachine for corporate sites, NGOs, public information - I get. But G+ is essentially a social network. I don't think people really would chose to have that information arbitrarily saved. I don't want to have to tell some stranger on the other side of the planet to 'stop saving stuff about me'. I think the parent comment is apt, and I don't think we need to be saving the information on social networks unless there's something specifically (not casually) public about it.

gerdesj 8y ago

"To be clear, I think the Internet Archive is good people with noble intentions" No they are not that at all - they are not good nor noble. They are dispassionate observers and recorders. That is the intent (I think)