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Whatever platform does not allow a search like "What did user U publish on day D" has a specific label: it is substantially the Soviet Pravda. Imre Lakatos de

by mdp2021 4y ago

Whatever platform does not allow a search like "What did user U publish on day D" has a specific label: it is substantially the Soviet Pravda. Imre Lakatos defined totalitarianism in terms of "how distant in the past can I retrieve documents" - the shorter the span of accessible data, the worse. In historical totalitarianism regimes such obstacle was instated to hide possible ideological changes in the regime, to give an appearance of monolithic consistency. In general, if you have a collector and checking history is not a basic feature, than it is nothing but a joke. (PS: the first post on HN is the 'Y combinator' submission from pg, Paul Graham, on October 9, 2006 - you find this with one URL. This is how it is supposed to be - the distantmost past is as accessible as the recentmost addition.)

delecti 4y ago
I think an audit trail of a government is very different from being able to pick through the personal posts of an individual person. I think it'd actually be a fantastic feature to have history gently fade away. If I could disable other people viewing my tweets older than 1 year, I'd enable it in a heartbeat, and I'd think nearly everyone else should too.
- mbreese 4y ago
  I think the right to be forgotten is one of the worst things we've lost in the modern Internet era. People should be allowed to say/do something stupid when they are young without it coming back to bite them when they are older. Within reason -- for example: pictures from college parties. There's no reason why these should be forever accessible. A nice, graceful decay on some data would make sense.
  - mdp2021 4y ago
    > something stupid I would say a good example of "something stupid" would be to publish something that should remain private.
    - mdp2021 4y ago
      And I would add: when exactly did the term 'prudence' fall from top positions to quasi-neglection in the ranking of frequency of use, and instead others like 'paranoia' started to climb?
    - mbreese 4y ago
      It's different now though... "publish" means much more than it used to. Now, if you want to share a picture with a few friends, that means "publishing" it on Facebook/IG/etc... It's no longer just a physical photo that is controlled by you. By moving personal interactions online, you lose a lot of control and things that used to be temporary are now permanent. I don't think that it's possible to put this genie back in the bottle, so the next best thing would be to have different levels of data permanence.
      - mdp2021 4y ago
        > By moving personal interactions online And by saying that, do not you get a vibe that makes you go "Wait a minute there...". > different levels of data permanence It makes more sense to discriminate "personal common spaces" and "The Public Statements of Sam Artist / of Noam Thinker / of Henry Statesman / of Theodor Ruler".
- mdp2021 4y ago
  If what you write should better at some point disappear, you should not write it in the first place. This, of course, in the collector with the purpose I am imagining - the replying poster clearly wants to visit a very different place. In the restaurant you get "restored" through proper treatment, while at the bar the idea is to get disturbed through every device: restaurants shall not be bars. When I, in the distant past, thought about checking T., it was because some specific great minds had approached it: I checked it on the idea to consult the statements from specific prestigious Intellectuals - not random posts. And: the replying poster has not provided a speckle of a justification for the "bohemian" idea proposed. > an audit trail of a government is very different The platform that the submitter proposed for discussion reportedly has an extraordinary participation of leaders, ministers, politicians and official speakers. So, while my original statement was a parallel in an absiological context ("if something important was submitted it has to be retrievable"), even a direct more literal application of the idea is possible.
- Kye 4y ago
  Mastodon has a built-in post culler for this purpose.

delecti 4y ago

I think an audit trail of a government is very different from being able to pick through the personal posts of an individual person. I think it'd actually be a fantastic feature to have history gently fade away. If I could disable other people viewing my tweets older than 1 year, I'd enable it in a heartbeat, and I'd think nearly everyone else should too.

mbreese 4y ago
I think the right to be forgotten is one of the worst things we've lost in the modern Internet era. People should be allowed to say/do something stupid when they are young without it coming back to bite them when they are older. Within reason -- for example: pictures from college parties. There's no reason why these should be forever accessible. A nice, graceful decay on some data would make sense.
- mdp2021 4y ago
  > something stupid I would say a good example of "something stupid" would be to publish something that should remain private.
  - mdp2021 4y ago
    And I would add: when exactly did the term 'prudence' fall from top positions to quasi-neglection in the ranking of frequency of use, and instead others like 'paranoia' started to climb?
  - mbreese 4y ago
    It's different now though... "publish" means much more than it used to. Now, if you want to share a picture with a few friends, that means "publishing" it on Facebook/IG/etc... It's no longer just a physical photo that is controlled by you. By moving personal interactions online, you lose a lot of control and things that used to be temporary are now permanent. I don't think that it's possible to put this genie back in the bottle, so the next best thing would be to have different levels of data permanence.
    - mdp2021 4y ago
      > By moving personal interactions online And by saying that, do not you get a vibe that makes you go "Wait a minute there...". > different levels of data permanence It makes more sense to discriminate "personal common spaces" and "The Public Statements of Sam Artist / of Noam Thinker / of Henry Statesman / of Theodor Ruler".
mdp2021 4y ago
If what you write should better at some point disappear, you should not write it in the first place. This, of course, in the collector with the purpose I am imagining - the replying poster clearly wants to visit a very different place. In the restaurant you get "restored" through proper treatment, while at the bar the idea is to get disturbed through every device: restaurants shall not be bars. When I, in the distant past, thought about checking T., it was because some specific great minds had approached it: I checked it on the idea to consult the statements from specific prestigious Intellectuals - not random posts. And: the replying poster has not provided a speckle of a justification for the "bohemian" idea proposed. > an audit trail of a government is very different The platform that the submitter proposed for discussion reportedly has an extraordinary participation of leaders, ministers, politicians and official speakers. So, while my original statement was a parallel in an absiological context ("if something important was submitted it has to be retrievable"), even a direct more literal application of the idea is possible.
Kye 4y ago
Mastodon has a built-in post culler for this purpose.