The Internet forgets, but I don't want to
3 days ago
- #social media
- #personal archiving
- #digital preservation
- The author reflects on the fragility of social media and the importance of preserving digital memories.
- They describe creating a personal 'scrapbook' to save social media posts that were meaningful to them.
- The scrapbook is a static site that stores conversations from various platforms, allowing for easy browsing and searching.
- The author emphasizes the importance of a good data model for long-term preservation, rather than focusing solely on tools or frameworks.
- They detail their approach to storing conversations as the unit of storage, ensuring context is preserved.
- Different data models and renderers are used for each social media site to accurately capture the unique aspects of each platform.
- Keyword tagging is implemented to facilitate searching and organizing saved content.
- The author includes a suite of tests to ensure the consistency and correctness of the metadata.
- Inspirations for the project include Twitter's first-party archives, the Flickr Foundation's Data Lifeboat project, and personal web bookmarks.
- The author encourages others to preserve their own digital memories, suggesting simpler methods like screenshots or text files.