Just wanted to say that I agree with your sentiment. It's supremely aggravating to browse eg. Reddit and find some potentially interesting posts wiped out by so

Just wanted to say that I agree with your sentiment. It's supremely aggravating to browse eg. Reddit and find some potentially interesting posts wiped out by some memory-erasing bot. And it is amazing how much we managed to preserve from historical periods, despite (as siblings point out) the theoretical ephemerality of information. I think it is important for subsequent generations to be able to study social phenomena of the past, and at least have a chance to be wiser. We could move beyond anecdotes, speculation and quasi-historical garbage, as "decline of America mimics decline of the Roman empire" meme regularly popping out in newspapers and such. From my experience people are fascinated when they find some saved communication/memorabilia from years back, and the only downside for them is the fear of being judged. The best dream situation would be where you can have changable identities, but there is an incentive to build respect for them over time (like on HN or Reddit), and there is a strong social convention that you could not be in any way harassed for what you said with such identity. You can also change it, like a mask (maybe in some minimal intervals), and it will be respected. Maybe also you can't refer to anyone's extra-online identity, and it concerns also people from the outside unless they're public figures. Or, that you can freely say anything under your real name under some online circumstances. It would be similar to carnival in traditional culture, with role reversal, rule suspension and all that. Although for this to work it should have an aura of unseriousness and inherent lack of consequence for the normal reality. I know what total anonymity with no continual identity leads to (vide *chans), but it is not even what we are talking about here. We could do better with some better social conventions, I think. Ie. have good amounts of both freedom and historical preservation.