I'm quoted in this excellent story on Gothamist, Death & Taxes, and the apparent ephemerality of news sites. I talk specifically about how news sites aren't really designed with long-term preservation in mind. longreads.com/2018/04/06/dig…

A year ago, as Mastodon was enjoying its first real surge in popularity, I wrote about how social media platforms are also not designed with an eye towards history (but could be!) parkerhiggins.net/2017/04/bu…

This month, one of the more storied and beloved Mastodon instances is shutting down (the reasons are complicated and beyond the scope of this tweet). The "freezing" feature I suggested a year ago would be nice to have around now.

Most platforms that store user data understand the need for data portability, even if they don't always deliver. Every CMS conversation too should include thinking about exporting, and static HTML pages should always be an export format!

@discourse has had built in user export of data since 2014

It was almost industry standard there for a while! And should be!

One thing we don’t do but I would like to is tombstoning a forum as static HTML pages (no vulns)