6 ms·
Which "server", exactly, will allow me to recover the messages from a conversation on Facebook after the service as we know it is long gone? (Out of business, m
by rcoder 4y ago
Which "server", exactly, will allow me to recover the messages from a conversation on Facebook after the service as we know it is long gone? (Out of business, moved entirely to the "metaverse", transcended along with the rest of the AI resistance, whatever.) Ditto my Twitter photo uploads, comment threads in GDocs, or app wireframes in Figma, much less code running on a cloud server somewhere.
Once upon a time, by recording a thing you made it durable *by default* and even got a copy you could do with what you liked. Now, recording and sharing words or ideas comes with zero assumption of durability. Your service provider's ToS and business fortunes might support them keeping it around and accessible for now, but there is zero guarantee that will outlast the whims and fortunes of a SaaS providers.
The combination of DRM (to lock down devices) and "everything lives in the cloud" (to keep custodianship and control of data in vendors' hands, not creators') means that without very intentional, often obscure and/or annoying manual steps, your correspondence, recordings, and other creative output will not survive you. Even _with_ painstaking effort there's every chance it won't work.
Personally, I've tried for a couple of years now to get people I work with to write important things down somewhere that isn't Slack, GDocs or another pay-to-play service. Business, personal, silly, whatever: as it stands, all of that culture and history and creativity is just going to go "poof!" as soon as some company's C-suite does the math and decides the storage and compute to make it available don't pencil out any more.
Now I just accept that unless I have 1) a complete, easily-cloned copy of something, 2) that I can access and manipulate using OSS software, 3) on a general-purpose computer I physically control, then that thing is not *mine*. If it isn't mine, I can't decide what happens to it in the near term, much less once I'm not around to lobby for access.
- BirAdam 4y agoA lot is always lost. Nothing has changed. In this case, some amount of data will survive (especially because data is valuable as a commercial asset), the software itself will likely survive, and instances will later be setup in a virtualized environments. The preservation of data for practicality is very different from historical preservation. Most data from any era gets lost because people at the time do not consider historical value. They consider what is needed for their own goals. Beyond that, most books deteriorate, film deteriorates, etc this is no different from any of that. I understand and sympathize with the idea of open standards, open formats, and the desire for more accessible media and storage. I really do. The loss of ownership over everything is a bummer. However, pretending that we are more at risk of data loss now than before is not valid. DRM always gets cracked. Pirates always find a way. Encryption is likely already compromised by intelligence agencies who slurp everything up in their own archives. Data hoarders are a thing. Mass duplication of data is a thing. People have made recordings and films showing interactions with all of our current systems. People have made all kinds of documentation, documentaries, tutorials, and other media regarding our modern culture, modern technologies, and so on. This is the single most well documented period in history. If anything, we’re doing better at this now than ever before. The real issue for future historians will be sifting through the amount of material.