5 ms·

It's an Atlantic article so it's long, and several of the comments here show that people aren't actually reading the whole thing... but I did and it's worth the

It's an Atlantic article so it's long, and several of the comments here show that people aren't actually reading the whole thing... but I did and it's worth the time. It's not only about links being dead, it's about the lack of transparency & audit when content is changed via takedown requests, it's about dead links showing up in decades-old supreme court decisions, it's about private industry's lack of incentive for wanting to improve any of these issues, etc.

ballenf 5y ago
Maybe the reason it feels impossible to stem the tide of link rot is that it's takes tremendous energy to constantly increase the entropy of a system. And that energy has opportunity cost that no one really wants to talk about. The article has the unstated assumption that eternal preservation of all writing ever is a net benefit. I think it's worth having a discussion on that point.
- kylestlb 5y ago
  I disagree that the unstated assumption is eternal preservation of all writing. IMO the author is clearly focusing on official or semi-official published information, not necessarily what you and I write on places like HN.
  - bentcorner 5y ago
    And there's the irony that's pointed out in the article as well - official documentation on government websites may not last past an elected official's term, yet blithe comments on a social media site that are later regretted may last forever.
- Sr_developer 5y ago
  > Maybe the reason it feels impossible to stem the tide of link rot is that it's takes tremendous energy to constantly increase the entropy of a system. I suppose you meant "decrease"
  - ballenf 5y ago
    Yes, thanks. Somehow that's always been backwards in my brain. Maybe I'll remember it this time.
  - jtsiskin 5y ago
    No, they mean increase. Decreased entropy would be cheaper to store and maintain.
ergot_vacation 5y ago
Having read the whole thing, it seems partially good, martially misguided, and partially terrible. The overall bent is a hand-wringing about link rot, which I thought we mostly got over a decade ago. The Internet is fundamentally ephemeral. If you see something you like, save it so you can repost it later. If you rely on someone else to keep in up indefinitely, you're being foolish. Around the edges of that main discussion, the Atlantic also touches on censorship in all the wrong ways, re-iterating the too-common view that censorship is good as long as the good guys do it. They at least argue that this censorship should be transparent and censored works still accessible in some way, but they seem to not understand the nature of what they're talking about. Censored works aren't censored to protect the public. They're censored to protect the rich and powerful. That's why "right to be forgotten" really exists. That's why Google and Youtube and Twitter and Facebook quash anything that goes against the accepted narrative in any given field. They aren't protecting the public from dangerous misinformation. No one gives a shit about the public. They're protecting the financial and political interests of some very powerful people. Given this, talk of a "poison cabinet" only illustrates ignorance of the issue. The Memory Hole cannot be divorced from the censorship process, it's a core part of it. If people can still find the information in some form, it's not censored enough to make the people it threatened happy. And this leads to the final point, which is that the real reason the web is "rotting" isn't link rot, it's censorship on the part of tech monopolies, due to their joined-at-the-hip relationship with every large corporation and industry imaginable due to advertising and other deals. The fact that links die doesn't matter much: you can just repost the material. The fact that links ARE ACTIVELY KILLED to suppress their information is a much more serious problem, and one that doesn't have an easy solution besides full breakup of the tech monopolies.
- pfraze 5y ago
  I'm not 100% convinced by your assertion that censorship only favors the rich and powerful. It can and often does, but it can also help people without power or society and large. For instance, taking down a dox for a niche YouTuber is clearly not helping a powerful person, but it's still arguably censorship. The misinformation area is somewhat stickier, but here's a decent example: if somebody decided to hurt you by spreading rumors (let's say that you watch CP) and spends time and money to get that rumor top of any SEO and forum thread, what's the right course of action? How good are you going to feel about using speech to counteract that when the result is a Google search giving your denial in spot 1 and the accusation in spot 2? We all have to grapple with power and the ability to abuse it, but I don't think it's effective to say power is fundamentally wrong. The conversation is more nuanced than that and has to be viewed as systems with checks on power, which means specific design-thinking.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ajsnigrutin 5y ago
> audit when content is changed via takedown requests Not just that, but even due to politics, someone wanting their history "changed", or even worse reasons. There were multiple reddit arguments recently, when someone posts a newsstory about something, discussion starts, two hours later the story is changed (without any footnote or old version available), and arguments start, because "there is noting in the article that says <what you said>", and no way for the original poster to prove, that it was, because noone even thought they'd need a screenshot.

ballenf 5y ago

Maybe the reason it feels impossible to stem the tide of link rot is that it's takes tremendous energy to constantly increase the entropy of a system. And that energy has opportunity cost that no one really wants to talk about. The article has the unstated assumption that eternal preservation of all writing ever is a net benefit. I think it's worth having a discussion on that point.

kylestlb 5y ago
I disagree that the unstated assumption is eternal preservation of all writing. IMO the author is clearly focusing on official or semi-official published information, not necessarily what you and I write on places like HN.
- bentcorner 5y ago
  And there's the irony that's pointed out in the article as well - official documentation on government websites may not last past an elected official's term, yet blithe comments on a social media site that are later regretted may last forever.
Sr_developer 5y ago
> Maybe the reason it feels impossible to stem the tide of link rot is that it's takes tremendous energy to constantly increase the entropy of a system. I suppose you meant "decrease"
- ballenf 5y ago
  Yes, thanks. Somehow that's always been backwards in my brain. Maybe I'll remember it this time.
- jtsiskin 5y ago
  No, they mean increase. Decreased entropy would be cheaper to store and maintain.

ergot_vacation 5y ago

Having read the whole thing, it seems partially good, martially misguided, and partially terrible. The overall bent is a hand-wringing about link rot, which I thought we mostly got over a decade ago. The Internet is fundamentally ephemeral. If you see something you like, save it so you can repost it later. If you rely on someone else to keep in up indefinitely, you're being foolish. Around the edges of that main discussion, the Atlantic also touches on censorship in all the wrong ways, re-iterating the too-common view that censorship is good as long as the good guys do it. They at least argue that this censorship should be transparent and censored works still accessible in some way, but they seem to not understand the nature of what they're talking about. Censored works aren't censored to protect the public. They're censored to protect the rich and powerful. That's why "right to be forgotten" really exists. That's why Google and Youtube and Twitter and Facebook quash anything that goes against the accepted narrative in any given field. They aren't protecting the public from dangerous misinformation. No one gives a shit about the public. They're protecting the financial and political interests of some very powerful people. Given this, talk of a "poison cabinet" only illustrates ignorance of the issue. The Memory Hole cannot be divorced from the censorship process, it's a core part of it. If people can still find the information in some form, it's not censored enough to make the people it threatened happy. And this leads to the final point, which is that the real reason the web is "rotting" isn't link rot, it's censorship on the part of tech monopolies, due to their joined-at-the-hip relationship with every large corporation and industry imaginable due to advertising and other deals. The fact that links die doesn't matter much: you can just repost the material. The fact that links ARE ACTIVELY KILLED to suppress their information is a much more serious problem, and one that doesn't have an easy solution besides full breakup of the tech monopolies.

pfraze 5y ago
I'm not 100% convinced by your assertion that censorship only favors the rich and powerful. It can and often does, but it can also help people without power or society and large. For instance, taking down a dox for a niche YouTuber is clearly not helping a powerful person, but it's still arguably censorship. The misinformation area is somewhat stickier, but here's a decent example: if somebody decided to hurt you by spreading rumors (let's say that you watch CP) and spends time and money to get that rumor top of any SEO and forum thread, what's the right course of action? How good are you going to feel about using speech to counteract that when the result is a Google search giving your denial in spot 1 and the accusation in spot 2? We all have to grapple with power and the ability to abuse it, but I don't think it's effective to say power is fundamentally wrong. The conversation is more nuanced than that and has to be viewed as systems with checks on power, which means specific design-thinking.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

ajsnigrutin 5y ago

> audit when content is changed via takedown requests Not just that, but even due to politics, someone wanting their history "changed", or even worse reasons. There were multiple reddit arguments recently, when someone posts a newsstory about something, discussion starts, two hours later the story is changed (without any footnote or old version available), and arguments start, because "there is noting in the article that says <what you said>", and no way for the original poster to prove, that it was, because noone even thought they'd need a screenshot.