• psycrow@lemmy.world
    734·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • Standroid@programming.dev
      381·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • Eufalconimorph@discuss.tchncs.de
        23·
        1 year ago

        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.

        • stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world
          2·
          1 year ago

          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

    • SSTF@lemmy.world
      5·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • psycrow@lemmy.world
        1·
        1 year ago

        I mentally associate the concept the most with the late 2000’s when Encyclopedia Dramatica (a troll wiki dedicated to making fun of people) was at peak popularity and could ruin peoples lives if an article was made on a person there. All you had to do was type in a persons name on google, and chances are their ED article was one of the first results. But then not even 2 years into the next decade, ED imploded because the site admins wanted the place to be more sterile and profitable, and they were tired of being threatened by lawsuits.

        You could argue that Encyclopedia Dramatica lives on in spirit as Kiwifarms, but at this point Kiwifarms struggles to even remain online 24/7 because they managed to piss off the wrong people.

        Nothing is eternal on the internet. The only way to save information is to actively back it up and maintain it.

    • GustavoM@lemmy.world
      2·
      1 year ago

      “Everything on the internet lasts forever” is a falsehood formed from a Web 2.0 mindset.

      What do you mean, my upvotes won’t last for all eternity? AND MY ANGRY DOWNVOTES?!?!

      WHAT IS THIS BLASPHEMY?

    • VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world
      101·
      1 year ago

      I mean, most of them were meant to be silly, but reddit was also around a shockingly long time for an internet community. Consider that Myspace was only around for three years before it started losing status. Reddit, by comparison, was a major site for a decade and is only now starting to drop. And the remindme bot has been around for most of that time. A bunch of those ‘remind me in a few years’ posts were actually tripped.

        • Gabu@lemmy.world
          7·
          1 year ago

          Most of those millions of users are largely irrelevant, as they don’t create content nor moderate. It’s akin to how Facebook can say they have millions of users, but nobody is actually using it anymore.

        • VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world
          4·
          1 year ago

          Of course, but cracks are starting to show. My point was that this is an absurdly long time for something like reddit to be around at all, so the remindmebot comments that were set for years out weren’t as out there as the guy above me seemed to think. Hell, reddit share holders seem to be upset with what’s going on, so there are decent odds they’ll revert the changes and we’ll be back there in a year.

          • sgtlighttree@lemmy.world
            4·
            1 year ago

            Hell, reddit share holders seem to be upset with what’s going on

            Not that I don’t believe this, seems plausible to me⎯but would you happen to have a source for that.

            so there are decent odds they’ll revert the changes and we’ll be back there in a year.

            Hate to say this but I’m still clinging on to Reddit for some of the niche subs, but hopefully they’ll spring up here.

    • PloKoon@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 year ago

      Question for you, when I try to go there it makes me log in, but I don’t have an account for that instance. Do I have to create a new account for each instance?

      • Zagorath@aussie.zone
        3·
        1 year ago

        You can make separate accounts on each instance, or you can access content on other instances from your instance. Unfortunately when you click on a URL someone shares that takes you out of your instance, but you can copy/paste that URL into your instance’s search box to access that post from your instance.

          • Zagorath@aussie.zoneEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            Great question. An instance is just the name of the site through which you’re accessing the Lemmyverse. So you’re on the lemmy.world instance, while I’m on aussie.zone.

            You can think of Lemmy a little like email. You could be on Gmail while I’m on Outlook, but both of us can communicate with each other just fine, even though our email providers are completely different.

            • wzzzy@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              Thanks for that explanation. That was my first post and this place is confusing and full of random exclamation marks lol.

              So are instances automatically assigned based on region? Or did I choose this instance? Can I switch, or would I notice a difference?

              • Zagorath@aussie.zoneEnglish
                3·
                1 year ago

                It’s just like with email, you choose which provider you go with. You must have gone to lemmy.world when you first came to Lemmy, so that’s your current provider.

                Right now, you can easily just go and sign up with another instance if you like. There are a heap of them, and if you google you can find out more about different ones. Some are general, like Lemmy.world, some have a geographical focus, like aussie.zone. Others are based more on shared interests, like ttrpg.network.

                On Lemmy, the equivalent of Reddit’s “subreddits” are called “communities”. And each instance has its own communities. Right now we’re commenting on [email protected], which you might also see referred to as /c/[email protected]. Those both mean the same thing. But there’s also a [email protected], and those two are completely separate communities with their own mods and their own rules. And even though your account is on lemmy.world, you could go into that other community and post or comment.

                Each instance has its own admins as well, and those admins have powers similar to that of admins on Reddit. They can ban users, remove communities on their own instance, etc. Most often the thing you’ll see talked about in terms of admin powers is “defederation”. That’s where the admins of one instance prevent users from another instance from interacting with them. Different admins might have different policies for why they would or would not defederate another instance, and you may want to ensure the instance you use has a defederation policy that you’re comfortable with—and one where your own instance hasn’t been defederated by other instances that you want to interact with.

                Right now, to move to another instance you just have to create a new account. Your old comments and posts etc. will be left behind. But there has been some talk about being able to migrate your account from one instance to another, and it’s theoretically possible. Mastodon is a fediverse equivalent to Twitter (in the same way that Lemmy is a fediverse Reddit) and I believe account migration is possible on Mastodon. For the most part though, no, you won’t really notice the difference between different instances.

    • axus@lemm.ee
      1·
      1 year ago

      I’m betting the Reddit posts will be there, but the people who were wrong usually delete there account within a year, in shame as they tend to be wrong about lots of other things. And yep I probably won’t be there either.

    • 9point6@lemmy.world
      47·
      1 year ago

      It’s kind of sad to look back at that blind optimism that of course Reddit wasn’t going to shit itself and I was definitely going to get that “!remindme in 10 years” DM and get a blast from the past.

      Now all those messages will never be sent

      • hydra@lemmy.world
        20·
        1 year ago

        Back when I was a teenager I had the blind optimism the future would be bright and we would keep all the positive trends we had in the early 2010s.

        • Obinice@lemmy.world
          19·
          1 year ago

          For my family, the 2010s were already a big downward trend. Huge global financial crisis and it’s fallout felt to this day, good things going away or getting worse (just look at how Facebook, Twitter, etc became utter crap around 2012), the rapid acceleration of income and class inequality, just so, so much that was slowly going downhill got even worse :-(

          It’s easy to forget that so much happened in the 2010s, even early on. It wasn’t long into that decade that Occupy Wallstreet reminded us that we can’t beat the rich, and that there’s no hope. It crashed and burned so hard, and nobody’s been able to stand up to corpos the same way since.

          For me, hope was lost in the late 2000s. Everything else has just been slow nails in the coffin since then :-(

          • nachom97@lemmy.world
            5·
            1 year ago

            Dang, I felt this one. But good things do come around either through lower expectations or better situations. That old quote always seems apt:

            In the meantime cling tooth and nail to the following rule: Not to give in to adversity, never to trust prosperity, and always take full note of fortune’s habit of behaving just as she pleases, treating her as if she were actually going to do everything it is in her power to do.

        • mantisteabaggin@lemmy.world
          12·
          1 year ago

          I was a teenager in the 90’s, so I understand about the whole blind optimism thing, and it’s something that I lost about 22 years ago.

    • IAmMohit@lemmy.ml
      2·
      1 year ago

      I think I remember seeing Reddit’s comment somewhere that remindme bot will keep working.

  • LazaroFilm@lemmy.world
    312·
    1 year ago

    I think the bot was already down before the blackout. I remember trying to set a !remind me and nothing happened. Then I read somewhere that the bot was now offline.

  • GoosLife@lemmy.world
    24·
    1 year ago

    I used to get a notification every year for some dude who had posted on reddit that he was alone on his birthday one year. He stopped replying several years ago, but I still messaged him each year at the prompt of remindme. So that’s also a use case.