1y ago

Is the saying, "The internet's written in ink, not pencil" accurate?

With things shifting around the internet the past year, and also just...Having been on the internet for awhile now, I feel like this saying, while decent as a cautionary measure...May not really hold up past that. Am I being a little naive though?

Is some decade(s) old post of mine from some old forum really still floating around somewhere out there on some random old server chugging along?

I feel like even in the corporate web, a bunch of that old data's probably been long lost courtesy of costcutting measures and businesses going under.

37 comments

I think it's less that it DOES exist forever and more that it CAN exist forever
You can't guarantee that every copy was deleted, even if you can't find it with a Google search.
Say you were able to check every accessible location on the internet, and you made sure it was deleted, you can't guarantee that someone didn't save it locally only to upload it again at a future date.

Anything that you want disappear will exist forever. Anything you want preserved will disappear tomorrow.
- Too true. This principal needs a name

It depends, I think. If it's a scurrilous, untrue rumour about your sexual habits, then it will be preserved indefinitely. If it's some critical information, that is only published in one place, and you need to cite it for a paper, then it's either gone or modified beyond recognition.
- Yup. Expect that everything lasts exactly as long as you don't want it to.
- I’ve never seen anything more accurate in my life
- And if it's a forum discussion with a solution to your current technical problem, the link will be dead.
- If it’s some critical information, that is only published in one place, and you need to cite it for a paper, then it’s either gone or modified beyond recognition.
  So the critical information may be best preserved if in some way associated with unscrupulous, dubious information? Or in other words, the tried and true folktale/embellishment transmission method?
  
  Yeah, just post something critical online and in the author section write something like "the author likes to masturbate in front of a window during the day while hula dancing" and the critical info will survive the heat death of the universe.
  
  Did you know I have a tattoo on my breasts? It's the full text of "New Economist Intelligence Unit Report: Open Banking – Revolution or Evolution?" from Temenos.
- Sometimes entire journals disappear (or maybe they never existed to begin with)
  https://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2023/12/where-do-journals-go-to-die.html

The things on the Internet are forever... except for that one thing you saw years ago that you can't find anymore. Everyone has their Internet white whales (or Holy Grails).
- Or great white buffalos

I think it still holds as a metaphor.
Pencil strokes can be erased easily, but pen strokes can't. They will still fade over time, or the library can catch fire, but it's not under your direct control.
- You say that like arson isn't a thing.

It is surely less accurate than it was presented to be a decade ago. I have searched for info I knew it was online 10 years ago, and most of it is either lost entirely, or Google is useless nowadays and can't find it anymore
- I don't think it was ever intended in the sense that content, once online, will always be available online.
  Just that, once posted, it's now in storage that you have no control over. Even if the original is removed, it can still be in any number of different places; anything from intentional private collections, to random webserver caches. It can re-apear in the public eye at anytime, you just need to combine someone that's got a copy with a reason to post it again.
  Posting content online is relinquishing control of its existence.
- Yes, links die. Servers die without being backed up by the other. But there is a higher chance that someone saved anything juicy... nudes, sensitive info you shared, etc. There are also a number of archive team type groups that have backups in the 50-100 terabyte range that aren't actually on the web for viewing, but if you can find it in the torrent you can download it.

Just always bear in mind that Beyonce had this photo deleted from the internet:
- Freeze, scumbag! The Bebe fans have been notified, and they are in route to tie knots into the end of all your shirtsleeves and turn your organs inside out!

I go with "Always assume that nothing is anonymous and everything is permanent".
- I'd add "and backup anything you care about".
  Because websites, webservices, content can all disappear, move, get deleted etc.

Once it's been posted online, you have no control or indication that someone else has saved that to their own storage.
You can remove your post, but you have absolutely no way to ensure its truly gone, even if you can't find another copy anywhere.

I would say it's written in disappearing ink. It can't be erased easily but can fade with time (assuming nobody comes along and adds more ink to repair the fading)

Unless you have the control on the webpage hosting a content, it's pretty hard to remove something out of the internet. Even if you do, people may-have back-up or screenshots, then there is place like internet archives where you'd find tons of old websites.
That said, tons of stuff end-up disappearing over-time. Look how many forum have closed down, is myspace still alive ? Recently, the French "Skyrock blog"platform closed down, but all of it's archive have been given to the French national library so in a few decades, sociologist will have tons of data about the youth of the millenials
Some good practice of digital hygiene include :
Do not use your real name, and change pseudonyms
Beware of photos, at a point mass face recognition will be the norm, so assume you're not anonymous, Posting a photo after proudly finishing a Marathon or earning a Karate black belt is fine. But if a photo isn't fine out of context, don't publish it.
- I went looking for old forums I used to frequent, and while the site itself is on the internet archive most of the conversations are lost. Only one or two snapshots a year

The problem is you don't know what is in ink and what is in pencil till years after the fact.
A forum I visited way back when, Kuro5hin, no longer exists but there is some snapshots on archive.org but I doubt that anything I wrote there is accessible (or traceable back to me either here of in real life.)
A blog I wrote for a couple of years back around '07 is definitely still online. But again, there is no way to connect it to current me.
TLDR: Be really sure before you put your real life name or identifying info to anything online.

Is some decade(s) old post of mine from some old forum really still floating around somewhere out there on some random old server chugging along?
Search for your old user name(s) and see for yourself. It's funny how much old stuff I find with the names I used back then. Some of it long forgotten, most of it pretty cringeworthy.

Web sites and pages come and go, but the search engine indices are forever. The Internet Archive, for example, uses data from a search engine crawler to populate their archive of the internet (until Alexa was shut down by Amazon, they do their own crawling now). Google likely has a lot of old internet data in archives as well.

We have far more capacity to archive than we have to recall, and this holds true even as an individual.
Which is to say that everything posted is indelible ("written in ink"), but the vast majority of it is rendered transient ("written in pencil") by way of a huge amount of obscurity.
Or, in simpler terms, it's both :)

sure, but its still written on paper. fire still does its thing

Is some decade(s) old post of mine from some old forum really still floating around somewhere out there on some random old server chugging along?
The No Such Agency probably has a copy in its data centre in Utah. Other nation state actors probably have one as well if it's the singular and not the plural (decade).

Is some decade(s) old post of mine from some old forum really still floating around somewhere out there on some random old server chugging along?
I searched for an older (embarrassing) username I first had 20+ years ago and luckily found nothing except someone who had since taken it on as their moniker.

It’s not written in either. It’s digital code stored on various electronic media.
- It's a metaphor mate
  
  Mating with a metaphor?!?! Is that like a linguistic breeding thing?

37 comments