It's about time that people understood that "Everything on the internet lasts forever" is a falsehood formed from a Web 2.0 mindset. Now those big Web 2.0 sites everyone thought would dominate the internet forever are dying, and the only thing saving what was on those websites (the internet archive) is being constantly sued by greedy publishers.
I think that warning is more about the lack of control you have over your own data. You post a pic or political view online and it will be duplicated before you know it and you won’t be able to delete it on your own terms.
Yep, it's just Murphy's Law of data: everything you regret posting will be in public archives forever, everything you want to preserve will have gotten deleted the next time you try to find it.
I think if we’re being honest it’s just information theory right? You but any sort of information out there (digital or not) and that info has ripple effects and propagates
The idea of old sites dying is what inspired me to hunt down really old hobby blogs and save up their images. Then contact creators and anybody who replied (sometimes it was a bit of detective work to find an old email) and signed off was reposted on my blog. Those old geocities type websites aren’t going to last forever without maintenance.
My effort is very small, but I think people should search out Web 1.0 and 2.0 old stuff in their wheelhouse and preferably with original author permission, rehost it.