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bityard • today at 4:36 PM • 4 replies • view on HN

> everything you put out on the internet never goes away

I've been thinking about this quite a lot recently as I've been trying to dig up information about 90's era dial-up bulletin board systems. It was a scene I was deeply immersed in at the time (or at least, one specific niche within it) and there is surprisingly little information left which is easy to find now, 30 years later. I remember the web being awash in more contemporary technical minutia than I could read in a lifetime. Now, the vast majority of it seems to be flat-out missing or at least very well hidden/distributed.

I think it is more accurate to say, "everything you put on out on the Internet _might_ never go away." Because my experience has been, a lot already has.


Replies

dylan604 • today at 8:43 PM

Just wondering what an internet archive for usenet groups might have looked like. Back then, it was cool to have messages have a finite time limit before going away. Snapchat isn't an original idea. Now, unless you're Snap, it's anathema for a company to think that willingly removing user content would be a good idea.

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walthamstow • today at 6:55 PM

I regularly mourn the photos of my early teens that were on MySpace and no longer exist anywhere

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esseph • today at 5:22 PM

> I've been thinking about this quite a lot recently as I've been trying to dig up information about 90's era dial-up bulletin board systems. It was a scene I was deeply immersed in at the time (or at least, one specific niche within it)

Say more!

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Avicebron • today at 4:42 PM

The might or might not is a critical part of why the panopticon works..