Inspired by this recent post from insomniasexx:
... and this recent post from mk:
IPFS is a new architecture for the web which - instead of using a client-server model - is more like bittorrent, in that everybody who visits webpages helps serve those pages. It also creates a new hash in the URL for each file every time a file is added or changed, which prevents the "link rot" of today's web, so that a certain URL will always point to the same unchanged content. IPFS's website and readme call it "The Permanent Web".
I'm a fan of IPFS and supporter of the Internet Archive, but after reading insom's post linked above, I thought a bit about whether I want a permanent web. I haven't seen any philosophical discussion in IPFS's github issues or irc about whether it's truly a desirable thing (although it does definitely have big advantages for making publishing content easier and ). There are search results that include my name that I hope are unfindable at some point. On one hand, the EU's right to be forgotten law seems like a win for privacy; on the other hand, it feels censorship-y and it really works against the nature of the internet.
Is a permanent web worth it if the price is a person's shame and embarrassment following them for the rest of their life? Or maybe it would lead to greater societal acceptance that people say and do and post dumb things when they're young, and that's okay? It's easy enough to publish content anonymously, or share things privately over the internet, but what are the chances that throughout adolescence a person won't accidentally give away one too many identifying characteristics, or decide to publicly publish one opinion that they'd later regret? With today's web, we at least have a hope of burying these details.
I think a permanent web and the Internet Archive are good, because the internet is a record of our culture and knowledge, and preserving our culture and knowledge for future anthropologists and historians and students is immensely important (regardless of whether the data is embarrassing). (And anyways, even if we were to conclude as a society that it were a bad thing, it's hard to imagine development stopping. The technical advantages of a distributed web are too great.) But what implications does this have in an internet culture filled with shame, false accusations, and hostility?