I’d like to hear from you on this one. An Opinion Guest Essay in the NY Times June 21, 2023 appears to be a warning voice in the wilderness about the unregulated loss of history via the internet. Titled The World’s Digital Memory Is at Risk, it is by Nanna Bonde Thylstrup. Dr. Thylstrup is a professor at the University of Copenhagen.
“As a scholar of digital data, I know that not all data loss — the corrosion and destruction of our digital past — is tragic. But much data loss today occurs in ways that are deeply unjust and that have monumental implications for both culture and politics. Few nonprofit organizations or publicly backed digital libraries are able to operate at the scale needed to truly democratize control of digital knowledge. Which means important decisions about how these issues play out are left to powerful, profit-driven corporations or political leaders with agendas. Understanding these forces is a critical step toward managing, mitigating and ultimately controlling data loss and, with it, the conditions under which our societies remember and forget”.
“Public spheres now exist precariously at the mercy of social media companies. And each day, corporations like Amazon, Alphabet and Meta extract and assetize our data, stockpiling it and monetizing it under dubious consent structures.”
The essay brushes against something I’ve already noticed: something no longer being available on the internet. (A doctored photo of Frump and a critical post about Henry Ford). If you can, it wouldn’t hurt to COPY something you would like to have accessible in the future.
Is there something other than Google? Who are the corporate owners of Google? According to the aforementioned Guest Essay, maintenance of information on the internet is not regulated. Given the attitude of many anti-woke conservatives, history is suspect and contains evidence of wrongdoing (therefore the current push to suspect and/or forbid teaching of parts of it in public schools and some universities, as in Ohio).
Guest Essay
The World’s Digital Memory Is at Risk
A few pertinent remarks: ”
“Tech companies, too, have a record of questionable policies around data, content moderation and censorship. They have their own motives — including a business model based on generating different data enclosures and on hardware and software obsolescence — and exist in a complex political and regulatory ecosystem. That ecosystem often offers perverse incentives to both maximize profit by selectively storing some data and reduce regulatory burdens by removing access to other data. Marginalized communities may be particularly vulnerable. During the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, some activists accused social media sites like Facebook of censoring their posts. Platform removal of adult content disproportionately affects queer communities. And in conflict zones, regimes and content moderation systems frequently remove material that could be crucial evidence in war crimes investigations.”
NANMYKEL.COM 