owning your web presence/history?

ripley

Well-known member
In the light of a few recent developments, which led to someone wanting their entire history of participation removed from the board... I'm struck by what an interesting idea that is.

I understand removing your current presence. But removing your past presence, that's something else again.

I'm curious what people think of the idea (NOT OF THE INDIVIDUAL WHO CHOSE THIS) - what rights do you have or want to have over your web presence in various forms?

Especially things like this - voluntary participation in group discussion?

I'm curious because I think in genuine interpersonal exchange, the whole is more than the sum of the parts, but also that means removal of the part (i.e. one voice) after the fact kind of destroys the whole. In some cases, that's a shame (it depends on how valuable you think the whole/discussion is)

I realized that I just assumed if I didn't like participating in dissensus any more (enough to quit), it would not have occurred to me to try to remove my past posts. Then again, I did go through an old weblog/online journal and make "friends-only" a lot of my more explicit posts I wrote 10 years ago when the Web was smaller and less searchable.

What about y'all? if you decided you wanted to leave, would you take your past with you? would it be different for a blog than for a board?
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I remember thinking about this sort of thing a few years ago, about how the old Nazi-style book-burnings could never achieve anything like their intended goal these days since pretty much any document that some authority decided it wanted to erase would probably, by the time said authority became aware of it, exist on the hard disks of servers and PCs all over the world. Thanks to the Internet, any information you put into the public domain, that is of interest to at least one other person, will probably exist for ever and ever.
 

booky

Member
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mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
I really like this area of thought, I think the beauty of the net is such that one can - in theory - take control of ones thoughts and then delete them, erase oneself from the presence one had, I wish the rewind were possible in real life.
I'm personally, nowadays, into leaving traces, but for years, had the possibilty of walking in the snow without leaving a trace been possible, I would easily have chosen that, a self-deleting biosoft.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
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Haha..."Anyone can take your image...even middle-aged men who do unskilled labour!!!!11"
 

nomos

Administrator
ripley said:
I'm curious because I think in genuine interpersonal exchange, the whole is more than the sum of the parts, but also that means removal of the part (i.e. one voice) after the fact kind of destroys the whole. In some cases, that's a shame (it depends on how valuable you think the whole/discussion is)

I think you're exactly right, and if we're talking about removing several thousand posts from a few hundred discussions then the intelligibility of the whole starts to be eroded, especially if it becomes the norm. It's different from someone having second thoughts about a few specific posts for particular reasons and deleting or editing them themselves (or asking a mod to). As a rule I ask myself if what I'm typing seems worthwhile enough and whether I'm comfortable with it being online the next day and in a few years. I've probably aborted half as many posts and I've made here.

Plus there are some related implications. We've just had a furor over the forum's integrity following the moderators' collective decision to remove a single thread. Now the mass, retrospective gutting of hundreds of threads by individual request is being proposed.

Also, from a technical standpoint the software's documentation cautions against intensive pruning like that because it taxes the server (making it slow or prone to crashing) and poses a risk to the database structure.
ripley said:
would it be different for a blog than for a board?
I think so. You've only got yourself to think about with a blog, in the sense that it's a private expressive space. But if you're taking part in a public discussion then I think it comes with resignation to the fact that what you choose to post is out there and potentially beyond your control. Exceptions might be a once-private forum made public, or a listserv that has been publicly archived without the prior knowledge of contributors.
 

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
Just to be clear, I do not regret anything I have ever posted and do not want to take anything down because any one particular post or part of one is problematic in my own mind or by my own standards for what is "internet appropriate."

I would like to take all of them down because I prefer not to be associated with this forum in any way. I think there are people who make it an ugly place and I've had enough of the bullshit. If there's no possible way for all of my posts to be deleted, so be it. No big deal, just thought I would give it a shot.

(Re whether it is technically possible-- I asked a friend who is good with these things and he said he could probably easily do it himself because Dissensus does not have a very secure server, apparently...)
 

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
Not at all. I asked a friend who is a web developer whether it would be technically possible to delete all of a member's post from a message board. He looked at this one and said yes, and said it doesn't have a secure server. That's all.

God he has better things to worry about I'm sure.
 

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
We've just had a furor over the forum's integrity following the moderators' collective decision to remove a single thread.

Much of that "furor" (mine at least) had everything to do with there being yet another allusion to the fact that stelfox wanted to start banning "at least 10" posters because he didn't like their style of posting. It had nothing whatsoever to do with deleting Jaie's misguided thread, in my mind at least.
 

nomos

Administrator
See the other thing is that every time your posts were quoted by someone else your username and words were reproduced in their posts. It would be virtually impossible to remove every trace of that username.

Also, I just checked, and because the original username has been deleted it's no longer possible to perform any actions on it in the admin interface. It doesn't show up.

(Sorry for going OT Ripley)
 

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
Well, I know you can't get rid of the quotes, but I think my friend was talking about getting rid of the rest on a really basic level of programming somehow not from the control panel...but I know nothing about that stuff so I'm not really sure.

Anyway, it's ok--thanks for giving it a try! I sincerely appreciate it.
 

ripley

Well-known member
I really like this area of thought, I think the beauty of the net is such that one can - in theory - take control of ones thoughts and then delete them, erase oneself from the presence one had, I wish the rewind were possible in real life.
I'm personally, nowadays, into leaving traces, but for years, had the possibilty of walking in the snow without leaving a trace been possible, I would easily have chosen that, a self-deleting biosoft.

Yeah, the rewind. But of course it can never happen, because you are not alone in your life. So you're talking about erasing parts of other people's experience.

But it's a little creepy (even for an anti-individualist like me) to realize that other people have claims to make on you and your past. I don't think this is universal, though. I would imagine people in different cultures are more or less comfortable with the idea that your being is collectively owned..

that's part of what's so interesting online - these "traces" that used to be so ephemeral, are saved. To some extent we may be conscious of creating those histories, but even so, it's hard to imagine what it means.

again, this is all aside from the REALLY creepy data privacy aspect (i.e. when your health insurance can build a profile of you from your web presence. ugh)
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
I don't think this is universal, though. I would imagine people in different cultures are more or less comfortable with the idea that your being is collectively owned..
What about that old supposed superstition about how some pre-modern tribes used to feel about cameras? Actually I don't like having my picture taken possibly for reasons a bit like this.
that's part of what's so interesting online - these "traces" that used to be so ephemeral, are saved. To some extent we may be conscious of creating those histories, but even so, it's hard to imagine what it means.
At least it's good to see that dissensus has opted out of being filed on the amazing but sometimes quite scary wayback machine.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
It is an interesting subject - it looks like we may be the last generation to have our teenage years completely undocumented on the net, for example.

The young 'uns seem much less hung up on privacy also - having photos of yourself online seems de rigeur whereas most people I know (and indeed people here) don't do that.

It's one of those strange things about the internet - if you fall out with someone in real life you can't erase all traces of yourself from their life...

Blogs are different I think - a few people I've know have deleted theirs in their entirety, I think because they didn't want to bother with them any more and needed to remove the self-imposed pressure to post.
 

martin

----
I what rights do you have or want to have over your web presence in various forms?

I think it's a cop out to blog or post on forums and then complain about rights, privacy or attachment - it's not as if anyone held a gun to your head and forced you to write / participate. I think people take Dissensus more seriously than I do (which isn't a judgement), I personally never look at old threads, I can't remember most of anything I've written here and it doesn't bother me - it was just something to while away dull moments at work. Though K-Punk and Woebot probably had other ideas when they set it up.

Anyway, isn't Dissensus google-proof?
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"In the light of a few recent developments, which led to someone wanting their entire history of participation removed from the board... I'm struck by what an interesting idea that is.
I understand removing your current presence. But removing your past presence, that's something else again."
Interesting topic and something I've thought about in the past. On another board I lurked on I read about someone being banned and then sending more and more over the top emails insisting that s/he owned everything that they had typed including private messages and demanding that all traces of them be destroyed and threatening legal action.
Of course, even if all posts by a particular person were deleted from the forum there is absolutely no guarantee that someone else hasn't backed up the whole thing so you can never totally be sure that all trace has been eliminated. On another forum someone created a character for a joke (maybe wind-up would be a better word) and deliberately coopied all the threads where the character posted knowing that they would almost certainly eventually be deleted. When this did indeed occur s/he created a website and blog (I think) documenting what had happened for posterity.
 

UFO over easy

online mahjong
It is an interesting subject - it looks like we may be the last generation to have our teenage years completely undocumented on the net, for example.

I started posting on boards when I was 14 or so I think. I only posted on one forum till I found subvert central when i was 17, and I thank christ that it was deleted years ago. You can probably still find it on the web archives though, and the same is true I'd guess of deleted blogs? When gutterbreakz was down I found it on an archive somewhere. I'd be interested to know if you can find old archived versions of message boards too. For example, can you find dissensus on web archives as it appeared a week ago, with all Nomads posts intact and including that controversial thread? I don't really know how it all works.

Definitely interesting though.

RE: the photos thing, most people my age (early 20s) do have photos on facebook and stuff, but they're always set so that only certain people can see them. That's quite a recent thing though, after all the fuss about net privacy in the media. I'm kind of surprised it took so long for people to cotton on.. From my own experience I reckon people really do treat the internet as an outlet for who they imagine themselves to be truly, without social constraint, and maybe that develops slowly into the exaggerated personas you find on message boards and blogs. I don't think the fact that it's all public is really something that factors into peoples actions on the web - it may even lead them to exaggerate their personalities more if anything.. like screaming who you really are off the rooftops to anyone that'll listen before you have to get dressed, go to work, pay the bills and do all the mundane shit everyone goes through every day.

It just becomes a problem, and rather embarassing, when who you really are changes daily, and you're confronted regularly with an outdated model of yourself which you can't alter. The lack of control over which model of yourself others are exposed to is the thing that gets me.

yours,

UFO over easy v. 1.6785030583
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Of course, even if all posts by a particular person were deleted from the forum there is absolutely no guarantee that someone else hasn't backed up the whole thing so you can never totally be sure that all trace has been eliminated.

Yeah, this was just my point about how you can never be sure now that information that's been in the public domain at some stage has ever been completely erased - all it takes is for it to be archived on a single hard disk somewhere and it can, if someone knows it's there, be duplicated and propagated indefinitely.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Interesting topic and something I've thought about in the past. On another board I lurked on I read about someone being banned and then sending more and more over the top emails insisting that s/he owned everything that they had typed including private messages and demanding that all traces of them be destroyed and threatening legal action.
The dubstepforum admins claim that they can't tell you why someone's been banned because if they did they'd run the risk of getting sued for libel. Which seems pretty weird - it's hard to see how someone could sue you for libel for a) quoting something you actually said or b) saying which of their forum rules they think you breached. And it gives the place a weirdly Kafkaesque feel at times...
 
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