BBC: The decaying web and our disappearing history

Few things are more explicitly ephemeral than a Tweet. Yet it’s precisely this kind of ephemeral communication – a comment, a status update, sharing or disseminating a piece of media – that lies at the heart of much of modern history as it unfolds. It’s also a vital contemporary historical record that, unless we’re careful, we risk losing almost before we’ve been able to gauge its importance.

But what I wonder is: what can we do about it?

There’s a couple things we can do about it. We can take charge of backing up our own content, we can educate others about the importance of backing up their stuff, we can try and pressure companies to allow for automated and easier backups, and we can try and get projects/archives set up to do this on behalf of us all. I know I’m archiving locally, not with any online service or app. Just some python run on a timer.