The internet shares many properties with the real world. There is no taking your words back once they leave your mouth. The same is true with the internet. As soon as something is posted online, even if it is taken down shortly after, anyone who saw it could have saved it and re-posted it elsewhere. It only takes one person to copy a picture and post it on another website for an image to be permanently online. Although digital expiration dates would help by removing old pictures, it would only affect the original post, not the countless numbers of copies. Some people might be skeptical about the number of copies of a picture there are on the internet, but when it comes to memes, website fan bases have heated arguments on who owns the original. If a picture is embarrassing enough that one wouldn't want it online for long, they probably shouldn't post it at all and it would probably be copied because of its content.
Another trait the internet shares with people's minds is the new pushes out the old. People often forget things from the past because they are replaced by newer, more relevant, memories. The internet does the same thing. Facebook posts, tweets, blog posts, and many other forms of internet posts get pushed down as newer posts take their place. Because of this, it may take a while to find this specific blog post five years down the road since there might be dozens of pages of posts to look back through to find it. We have all tried, at some point, to look back through our old Facebook posts to the beginning. The result is either frustration from having to wait a long time for the page to load, and then amazement when we look at the scroll bar and seeing how small it becomes. Of course, the way around this is the shortcut of searches. Some websites even have features that help their audiences easily find older content. The point is most internet posts get better hidden with each post that follows it.
My final issue with the idea of digital expiration dates is what I'll call the "collateral damage." Of course an expiration date would be great for a picture or post that would be followed by "#yolo", but not for a family picture or something similar. Picture libraries on the internet should work more like a family photo album. Only the best should be posted, or put into the album. Another way to look at it would be like the box of photos we found when we went through my grandfather's house after he passed away. My dad spent a lot of time going through pictures deciding if they should be kept and which sibling should keep them. The best pictures from the most memorable moments are kept while duplicates or pictures from the same event but lower quality, are discarded.
When it comes down to it, the best way keep bad posts off the internet is to not post them. If you don't want someone else to post it, it's a bit more challenging, but it can still be done. Just post what you are sure would be wanted a few years down the road. That way the rest of us who already watch ourselves on the internet won't have to deal with something crazy like digital expiration dates.
Mikie,
ReplyDeleteI thought this was a very interesting post. I too found the idea of digital expiration to be both interesting and problematic. I totally agree with your point that digital expiration can only help so much because of copies of photos that are made while the post is up. It was a good analogy to compare this to not being able to take back your words after they leave your mouth. I also liked how you looked at digital expiration from the opposite view that it would also potentially delete photos that people wanted to keep up. I think that if anything like this ever did become prevalent, there would have to be an option to control whether or not it has a digital expiration date.
I agree that digital expiration dates are a good idea but probably would not work. In today's world of quickly advancing technology, websites could create loopholes where pictures and posts would constantly be 'taken down' and 'reposted' just to get around the expiration date. Also, people can now screenshot basically anything and save it on their computers forever. I totally agree, as a driven student whose life goals were to get into college and to get a good job, that you should not post anything you do not want to be seen. It seems so simple, yet people are willing to risk it for 'fame!' Great blog post!
ReplyDeleteMikie,
ReplyDeleteI really appreciated the insights in this post, especially where you explore the angle of a family photo album where only the best moments are preserved. However, if this were the case, who would get control what is the best? Some moments that one person values maybe the polar opposite from another person. As long as everyone has the power to save a photo or a post, the only way to truly filter your content is be vigilant in the content posted in the first place which you addressed. Also, I am one of those people who has gone through my Facebook profile to see what I originally posted, it is interesting to see how people grow and change through the years.
Hey, Mikie. I enjoyed how you connected posting on the Internet with speech and the mind. I can definitely see how people (the users) shape how the Internet (the tool) is used. However, the key difference that I see between our minds and the Internet is that people can search through the Internet and find things. We can't just dive into our minds and pull out memories like we can find files in the Internet. That is where I think digital expiration dates can come in to help make the Internet more like the mind. It can emulate the mind's way of forgetting things that are of little importance by actually deleting them instead of "hiding" them. This can save us from some potentially embarrassing moments in the future.
ReplyDelete