Dave Troy Nov 13, 2022
Another design consideration re: Mastodon is that it works well for ephemeral asynchronous communications, but for many reasons should not be counted on as an archival resource. Media attachments are periodically purged and may not be available after a week, or a month, etc. While some servers may try to preserve content forever, this may be costly and unsustainable. Creators, researchers should treat this as an ephemeral resource and make provisions for self-archiving anything important.
Show threadAshton PittmanNov 13, 2022
@davetroy If accurate, this may be the biggest reason why Mastodon won't be able to become a Twitter replacement. The way Twitter serves as a cultural archive is indispensable. Although Elon Musk is working hard to trash it.
Show threadRenéeNov 13, 2022
@ashton Twitter is just as ephemeral; already, search past certain dates is difficult, and they could decide to do the exact same thing at any time. It's a mistake to assume the current implementation is the future one. Very few internet sites have survived intact more than a decade. @davetroy
Show threadThiago
@reneestephen you are right. But the whole Twitter going down (with a lot of notice time before) is different than your media being deleted after a couple months
Nov 13, 2022 at 6:44pmWeb