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The Library of Congress Will Stop Archiving Every Public Tweet On January 1st (gizmodo.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the end-of-an-era dept.

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.

3 of 79 comments (clear)

  1. Posterity by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    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.
  2. Re:Why did they do this to begin with? by nospam007 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Twitter is little more than a digital version of some a-hole writing something on the wall of a public restroom."

    Nonetheless historians are studying the graffiti on the walls of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

    https://www.smithsonianmag.com...

  3. Re:Why did they do this to begin with? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Mostly a collection of advertisements and banal BS.

    In hindsight, it is often the banalities that are the most interesting. Archaeologists often learn more from looking at ancient garbage dumps than from excavating palaces.