Ephemeral nature of the internet
Jan. 28th, 2022 02:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jajalalaHad a slight panic last night when trying to find an image to show my friend... My mom has a blog that used to be pretty active when my siblings and I were kids, which has a ton of stories and pictures of our family over the span of two decades or so. To be honest I find it a little embarrassing, and have mixed feelings on being 'content' for a blog, but it was something shared with mostly other mommy-bloggers (so more like community-building rather than capitalizing) and she didn't post anything too personal or uncomfortable so I'm fine with it existing, especially since it's includes a lot of stories, anecdotes, and pictures I probably wouldn't remember on my own.
But there was a particular picture I knew was on the blog when I last checked it, which I wanted to show a friend of mine, but when I went to the date it was posted I found the image was broken... After digging around, I saw many of the image links were broken, having been hosted on sites that are now extinct (or perhaps she did not elect to pay to keep those images up, I'm not sure). I've noticed this problem in the past while looking at the blog, but only for the really early posts, now it seems the problem has spread further than I thought over time.
It was a harsh reminder of how the internet really isn't forever, and made me wonder what my records will be like twenty years from now. Will this dreamwidth account still exist? Will AO3? What if I decide to embed an imgur/twitter/tumblr image on AO3, and one of those sites shuts down or changes domains? Will I go back and fix that? Will I even have the original image on my hard drive anymore?
I can't predict the future, but I'm going to be a little more vigilant about archiving from now on. There's at least a good ending to my original problem: I took a look on the wayback machine, and discovered that there have been occasional snapshots of my mother's blog! Many were still broken image links, but at the very least I was able to track down a snapshot that somehow included the image I was looking for! I felt very thankful for whichever person or webtrawler was considerate enough to include this random mommyblog every few years. I even made an account and took some snapshots today so at least some of it will remain accessible, even if the whole blog itself is deleted some day. I also downloaded at least some of the photos I liked from the blog. They're still there for now, but who knows what will happen in the future?
But there was a particular picture I knew was on the blog when I last checked it, which I wanted to show a friend of mine, but when I went to the date it was posted I found the image was broken... After digging around, I saw many of the image links were broken, having been hosted on sites that are now extinct (or perhaps she did not elect to pay to keep those images up, I'm not sure). I've noticed this problem in the past while looking at the blog, but only for the really early posts, now it seems the problem has spread further than I thought over time.
It was a harsh reminder of how the internet really isn't forever, and made me wonder what my records will be like twenty years from now. Will this dreamwidth account still exist? Will AO3? What if I decide to embed an imgur/twitter/tumblr image on AO3, and one of those sites shuts down or changes domains? Will I go back and fix that? Will I even have the original image on my hard drive anymore?
I can't predict the future, but I'm going to be a little more vigilant about archiving from now on. There's at least a good ending to my original problem: I took a look on the wayback machine, and discovered that there have been occasional snapshots of my mother's blog! Many were still broken image links, but at the very least I was able to track down a snapshot that somehow included the image I was looking for! I felt very thankful for whichever person or webtrawler was considerate enough to include this random mommyblog every few years. I even made an account and took some snapshots today so at least some of it will remain accessible, even if the whole blog itself is deleted some day. I also downloaded at least some of the photos I liked from the blog. They're still there for now, but who knows what will happen in the future?
