The internet really is that forgetful

The saying “The Internet never forgets!” is often used to prevent young people from posting all too personal things on the Internet. In this context, the sentence makes perfect sense, because social media posts or screenshots of them are usually retained for the relevant period of time. However, the assertion cannot be maintained over a longer period of time.

A classic hard drive has a lifespan of about five years. With an SSD it is more than twice as much, but the problem of digital storage media is already evident here. Their lifespan is limited and cannot even begin to match that of analogue storage media such as vinyl records or books.

With larger Internet services, data is of course usually stored redundantly, so that the failure of individual hard drives is never a problem. But even that doesn’t necessarily save data from ending. Three years ago deleted myspace for example, accidentally uploaded music from the users from twelve years ago. A total of 50 million songs from 14 million artists were lost.

A small part of the lost songs later found their way into the specialized in the preservation of Internet data Internet archives, but in the end millions and millions of songs disappeared, copies of which may not all exist. With that, a part of our cultural heritage has also disappeared.

Important contemporary documents that would have given music historians a very precise insight into the period from 2003 to 2015. Especially since Myspace was the contact point for musicians on the Internet at the time and made careers like those of pop singer Adele or the rock band Arctic Monkeys possible in the first place.

However, data does not always disappear accidentally. Economic considerations are often behind this. In 2019, for example, Yahoo Groups was discontinued after 19 years. Simply because the service hardly had any users. Some of the information collected there was archived by activists, but even then it cannot be ruled out that a lot of niche knowledge was lost with the disappearance of individual groups.

The fact that Facebook could no longer be profitable at some point may sound unlikely after all the affairs that have survived comparatively well, but the social network has been struggling with a decline in young users for years. Seen in this way, it is not entirely absurd that the user base will one day simply die out.

At Twitter, the new CEO Elon Musk is already busy reducing the interest of the advertising industry in the service. The restoration of the accounts of controversial figures, such as rapper Kanye West, who was banned for anti-Semitic comments, or ex-President Donald Trump, who was locked out after the storming of the US Capitol, are making Twitter more and more of a problem for advertisers.

Neither Facebook nor Twitter will stop the service in the foreseeable future, but probably at some point. Until then, we as a society should consider how we can obtain the data collected there for research. In the end, we can not only do this task for non-profit organizations like the one already mentioned Internet archives leave. Because the task is too important for that.