Mastodawn

Tim Bray Dec 16, 2022

If you’re going to leave Twitter, please don’t
a) delete your account, because someone bad will steal your handle
b) delete your Tweets, because their existence doesn’t help Elon and it’s like burning the Library of Alexandria.

Twitter captures a real-time historical record of a couple of decades and the billions of individuals’ snapshots are irreplaceable.

The thought of all those tweets being erased makes me feel physically sick.

[please pass on if you agree.]

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jwz Dec 16, 2022

@timbray I agree with A but (for me) not with B. I have long delete all of my twits and likes after N months for the same reason that I close comments on my blog posts after N months: nothing good can come of those late replies: no community, only bots and monetization.

Anything of substance (you know, the *quality* fart jokes) are on my blog. I'm not one of those "buckle up" goofballs. I know HTML and several other languages.

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Tim Bray Dec 16, 2022

@jwz I guess, but there are several actual wars and earthquakes and political crises and volcano eruptions and (even worse) browser specification debates where the second-by-second narrative is recorded for our descendants. I’m reluctant to lose that shit.

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jwz Dec 16, 2022

@timbray For sure, and this is why I donate actual US currency to the Internet Archive!

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jwz

@timbray Textfiles said, "Youtube is a video archive in the same sense that a supermarket is a Food Museum" and the same is true of Twitter, especially of Apartheid Emerald Mine Space Karen's Twitter.