The Library of Congress Will Stop Archiving Every Public Tweet On January 1st (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: In 2010, the Library of Congress started archiving every single public tweet that was published on Twitter. It even retroactively acquired all tweets dating back to 2006. But the Library of Congress will stop archiving every tweet on December 31, 2017. The Library of Congress issued a white paper this month saying that it was proud of its comprehensive collection of tweets from the first 12 years of Twitter, but that it's completely unnecessary for it to continue. Instead, the organization will only collect tweets that it deems historically significant. For instance, President Trump's tweets are almost certainly still going to be saved for future generations. One reason that the Library is stopping the comprehensive archive? The social media company's controversial change to allow 280 character tweets. The Library's halt on collection of all tweets puts Twitter more in line with the way that other digital collections are archived, including websites. The Library of Congress only archives websites on a selective basis, unlike the nonprofit, non-governmental organization the Internet Archive, which has a much broader goal of archiving everything online with its Wayback Machine. The Library of Congress also noted that many tweets include photos and video and that it has only been collecting text, making some of its collection worthless.
Assuming they are only archiving text, I wonder how much storage that requires. Of course it would compress VERY well.
Twitter is little more than a digital version of some a-hole writing something on the wall of a public restroom. Mostly a collection of advertisements and banal BS. It's not like we have someone writing profound tresses on the human condition there.
Hell.. personally I really believe that the entire act of doing this was nothing more than a giant advertising campaign for Twitter using former President Obama's connection to the media.
I'm actually more surprised this data collection has gone on at the Library of Congress since 2010, than the news that it's ending.
Now if the story had started with "The NSA...", I would've been quite shocked at its termination.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Archaeologist 1: "Hey, I just discovered a message broadcast by the leader of the once great empire, United States!"
Archaeologist 2: "Marvelous! What's it say?"
Archaeologist 1: 'Let's see..."Rosie O. looks like a horse farted out a prune. Disgusting loser, so sad!"'
Archaeologist 2: "On second thought, let's pretend we never found it."
Table-ized A.I.
The government realized it was useless hosting this data at both the Library of Congress AND the NSA datacenter.
THERE is zero usefulness of all that crap text.
I assume they started collecting thinking twitter will be closed much faster...
I mean come on, that should have even be illegal!
ITS just like if someday, they decide every letter and postcard sent by mail should be opened and scanned to get archived. Some people need to be fired for so much money wasted on stupid projects!!!
Who decides what is historically significant? Is William Shatner's opinion on the best Love Live girl historically significant?
https://twitter.com/WilliamShatner/status/942966660356435968
I would say yes, but the Library of Congress may not appreciate the significance of this post.
Why waste money archiving that vatnik retard's toilet tweets?
All this means is that, in 5000 years, historians will get a dangerously stilted view of what was posted on twitter - if Trumps tweets are archived, but not the tweets that debunks his claims, then his claims will stand unopposed for future historians to debate about.
Shannon's paper "Prediction Entropy of Printed English" tries to measure the amount of information per character in English.
He found that English is about 1 bit per character, and so compressed text can be expected to take up about that much room.
The paper is a pretty interesting read if you have read his 1948 paper that defines entropy (also a good read).
He came up with some interesting experimental methods to measure entropy in English.
This is the best proof yet that the U.S. possesses time-travel technology!
How else does the Library of Congress know which tweets will be of historic significance?
All this means is that, in 5000 years, historians will get a dangerously stilted view of what was posted on twitter - if Trumps tweets are archived, but not the tweets that debunks his claims, then his claims will stand unopposed for future historians to debate about.
How do you mean, exactly?
I'm wondering what danger there could be (5000 years from now), and if we should take steps to avoid it.
What a waste of my money saving all that crap in the first place.
twittertwats tweet too much.
Okay, this is a rant I admit it.
But US Gov. is a financial train wreck. We just passed "TAX CUT" with expected 1 trillion added to deficit, and we find out how wasteful stuff like this happens all around us.
Library of Congress is part of Judicial branch with budget of about 700M USD.
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
OMG I'm in the Library of Congress? I'm published!
Apparently a single public employee is monopolizing the service and sucking up all the storage space.
They just got a $1 million donation this week (still at least $900,000 if you factor in current Bitcoin fees) Hopefully that money will help them to step up and take over the job of archiving every single tweet, because every single tweet needs to be archived.
None of this "I regret that drunken tweet from last night, I better delete it before anyone sees" shit.
Those are not lies, they are "colorful and whimsical interpretations of events and alternative realities".
Table-ized A.I.
I'm sorry.
"President Trump's tweets are almost certainly still going to be saved for future generations"
How will future generations knows that Kim Kardashian got a pimple on he ass? Won't someone think of the children!
Just buy one of the dead domains they "archive" and reacticate it.. BOOM! Watch all their "archives" disapear! What a fucking joke.
so it's as if 1984's Big Brother died and left his brother, Big Bozo, in charge.
Says the illegal drug fucked up Mexican murderer who rapes goats... And is a dumb fuck who can't get a job at Walmart.
This looks strangely similar to Rants & Raves on Craigslist. Perhaps the Library of Congress should archive that instead of Twitter, then.
No archiving the next three years of Trump tweets? How will the apes get their sacred scrolls? I guess Trump won't get to be Lawgiver for when the apes take over. Mike could still be Dr. Zaius if creationists have their way.
Genuinely curious - how does that compare to previous presidents?