The aliens told me never to join Twitter, because something like this was going to happen!

I never believed them until I saw it on the news today. This past year has been very interesting, with all the political stuff. Since this has gone global, it might just prove worthy of study for the future generations.

I'm just glad I never got into it:P

Wow... It guess like all of those inappropriate tweets will live on in infamy, and any attempt to make people forget about them will be in vein. Guess like privacy is thrown out the window and it looks like embarrassment from people who might of tweeted something they didn't will rise.

Though I wonder, does this count for deleted tweets as well?

Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy Why would they do this.  I mean I don't usually say anything bad, but that's not cool of them to record every single tweet!  *makes account private*

I also don't want to see a history book that mentioned Justin Bieber and what he tweeted.

It's not just Twitter. If you think anything you're posting to any message board or other site isn't being archived by someone then you're dreaming. Even if you can't find it online via an existing service, someone might be archiving spidered sites to sell to the highest bidder down the road.  Hard drives have never been cheaper and text compresses well.

Even worse, services have already archived and offered a lot of the old Usenet flame wars - and as it was hela easy to telnet to an nntp server and fake being someone else in those days, making a lot of people look like asses through no fault of their own.

The lesson to teach your kids is:  treat everything that they put on the Internet like it is for forever and irrevocable.

http://web.archive.org/w...thardware.com/index.html 

LOL i can only view that page for a second before it redirects me... 😃

WOW Twitter is growing so much! Now to turn my twitter to private... Even though i never log in -.- lol

Yeah, one of the ads reloads or something. Just hit the stop button before it can redirect you.

It's not just Twitter. If you think anything you're posting to any message board or other site isn't being archived by someone then you're dreaming. Even if you can't find it online via an existing service, someone might be archiving spidered sites to sell to the highest bidder down the road.  Hard drives have never been cheaper and text compresses well.

Even worse, services have already archived and offered a lot of the old Usenet flame wars - and as it was hela easy to telnet to an nntp server and fake being someone else in those days, making a lot of people look like asses through no fault of their own.

The lesson to teach your kids is:  treat everything that they put on the Internet like it is for forever and irrevocable.

http://web.archive.org/w...thardware.com/index.html 

Well then what's the point of deleting anything if it can be archived. I mean if we see our private messages on the internet at some point then what's the point for the word "private"? At least the people in the future will learn some historical significance from every message in the past, if they Library of Congress ever decides to archive every forum post.

>> I mean if we see our private messages on the internet at some point then what's the point for the word "private"?

What's being archived is generally *not* private. If you have to enter your own password to see it, a web spider is not going to be archiving it (unless access is via general authority to a forum - in which case the spider just might have an authorized account).

The problem is, people don't realize just how "public" everything else is. When you're in the HotHardware forums, or those of any another site, it might seem like hanging with friends in a cozy den... but the reality is that there's a TV camera in the corner and you're on a reality show. And, every idiot in the world has a VCR.

And trust me: I know a thing or two about being an idiot.  :)

"The main purpose of this is to allow researchers to study trends and topics during major events, which is something that hasn't really been possible before Twitter gave the world an outlet to express instant views in one single place. So, you might as well go ahead and tweet your thoughts about this; it'll be read in some history book 20 years from now." 

I know exactly what they are going to find. We humans are prone to follow residual trends over any situation. Imagine our social communication as one massive hive mind. When an event happens, everyone talks. But we'll end up seeing the most tweets coming from pop culture related news more than anything I think. Like Tiger Woods and Michael Jackson for example. I don't know how the history books will cover that, but I can promise that even when these history books are published our social trends won't have changed. 

This is very strange though coming from the legislature. I understand that they are normal people too, but they never really seemed to acknowledge popular culture trends very much. I guess it's easier to archive stuff from Twitter because of the simplicity of the posts. Come to think of it, it makes sense though. When we want to refer back to a place and time in history, we can just look at the responses that millions of people made to get a more accurate data representation of what people actually thought, than trying to make a poll to get an accurate comparison...it just won't work with the polls because not enough people will participate. Skewed data is bad data. Ahem news channels.....

I imagine that we shouldn't have much to fear, unless of course the archive is open to the public. I suspect that people will be safe from possible legal charges as well. 

[quote user="3vi1"]

It's not just Twitter. If you think anything you're posting to any message board or other site isn't being archived by someone then you're dreaming. Even if you can't find it online via an existing service, someone might be archiving spidered sites to sell to the highest bidder down the road.  Hard drives have never been cheaper and text compresses well.

Even worse, services have already archived and offered a lot of the old Usenet flame wars - and as it was hela easy to telnet to an nntp server and fake being someone else in those days, making a lot of people look like asses through no fault of their own.

The lesson to teach your kids is:  treat everything that they put on the Internet like it is for forever and irrevocable.

http://web.archive.org/w...thardware.com/index.html 

Well then what's the point of deleting anything if it can be archived. I mean if we see our private messages on the internet at some point then what's the point for the word "private"? At least the people in the future will learn some historical significance from every message in the past, if they Library of Congress ever decides to archive every forum post.

LOL that worked, I laughed when i read Dave's bio... :P

Also the internet is not the right place to study these kind of things 😃.

3vi1's link is pretty interesting. I never knew HH went back that far.

The site seems like it was a lot more community orientated back then, and Davo and Marco had a good sense of humor :)

I love the personal tone in each post too :P

Ha-Ha! I laughed out loud when I read this. Imagine all the dweebs pouring over everybody's tweets, looking for the one that will be, and can be, the news of the day!

Anyone who expects privacy from a public forum is being unrealistic. If you post it, it's so somebody else can read it. They may share your words without your knowing about it too.

Any deleted tweets will be saved for posterity as well. So if you typed it, then you said it forever it seems! Ha-Ha!

Thanks for the link 3vi1. I looked around at the old HotHardware reviews and had to laugh a little at the speeds things were running back then. We HAVE come a long way,.....Check out this old graphic from the site too,.......[:D]

Hey, I actually remember the Heat Meter! Kicking i old school there.

Exactly Neil. Anything posted on the internet is fair game for anybody to find. The Praetoriaguard website that I visit has this section called "Forum Member Blogs." Basically a bunch of guys can have e-journals that they keep their friends on the website up to date with. 

Well, I have one that's like 50 pages long, and I have said some stuff in there that made me feel uncomfortable when I google searched my username, and the search results had parts of that writing. Even after I deleted the post itself the search results were still there. 

It's resolved now though, I'm good friends with the guy who runs the server for that website, and I had him delete the content off of his server space. 

Still, I love the fact that every tweet in history is being frozen in time, so to speak. If this has a public access terminal I bet a bunch of friends will look back on their tweets like a picture book, and laugh at all the idiot things that were said.