Could Twitter collapse wipe out vast records of recent human history?

[jbgusa]

Originally Posted by Gregory310

I was only on Twitter for a few months and found it to be a total waste of time. Confusing and no different than an unmoderated forum where one can say pretty much anything and get away with it. Can be name calling, lies, conspiracy theories and so on. I finally deleted it and was glad to be done with it. That said. I fail to see how any historical records can be expected to come from this.

I had my account for about six years and have only used it to follow, "live", election returns. I don't think most of the "data" has much historical value that isn't found elsewhere. There are lots of places where various issues are "debated" or more accurately "echo-chambered."

As for the coming (likely) collapse of Twitter, Twitter does not have much more value than Mosk's other "product", the Tesla. EV's can only be viable with mass subsidization or mandate.

[Humphrey_C_Earwicker]

Originally Posted by jbgusa

I had my account for about six years and have only used it to follow, "live", election returns. I don't think most of the "data" has much historical value that isn't found elsewhere. There are lots of places where various issues are "debated" or more accurately "echo-chambered."

As for the coming (likely) collapse of Twitter, Twitter does not have much more value than Mosk's other "product", the Tesla. EV's can only be viable with mass subsidization or mandate.

I don't use Twitter myself. It is useful for some things. If it disappears the sky won't fall. The alternative to EV's the ICE, is dependent on fossil fuels.
The IMF estimates annual global subsidies to fossil fuels runs $5.9T and increasing.

https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/climat...ergy-subsidies

The annual US number is $20B in direct, and $675B indirect

https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fac...subsidies-2021

[AnnieA]

Originally Posted by cdnirene

Genealogy is my hobby. A lot of paper records have been digitized and are available for viewing online.

Newspapers. Examples:
https://www.newspapers.com/ and https://newspaperarchive.com/

Internet archive: https://archive.org/


It also contains “over 734 billion web pages in the Wayback Machine.”

Genealogical records: https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist...-records-vault

There is so much that is already lost, especially in the South. So many courthouses burned down, some repeatedly. My main county in GA, the courthouse burned 3 times. The only time I could get useful info, the clerk had moved some of the 1850 court records to his basement.

Then GA elected a few years back to cut funding to one of the most important libraries in the SE, the GA State library. The custodians had worked there for many, many years and knew where so many documents going back to the early history of the country were squirreled away. Priceless documents and artifacts were in the library. Employees were let go, only a couple left and, you had to make an appt on certain days to visit the library. I cried at the time.

You can go to Savannah and recapture some of it but much was lost at the State library.

LDS has enormous amounts of records, as well