I recently had the sort of sad experience of remembering an idea that I'd seen someone express pithily in a Tweet, going back through my logs to find where I had retweeted it, and discovering that the original tweet was no loner available.
I don't challenge this person's right to delete their own content, and I can understand the desire to automatically delete old content from a privacy standpoint (i.e., not wanting prospective employers and/or stalkers and/or trolls pawing through your old stuff), but I do think it's important to be aware that there is a flip side to that coin, that there really can be people out there who admire your thoughts and would like to be able to refer back to them from time to time.
@dynamic OTOH, the problem with centralized services is that when you leave them, your content often disappears. I've seen this with LinkedIn and Twitter. Especially disheartening was LinkedIn groups content, where a person gets removed from whole conversations. Usenet is a caution on decentralized services. It hasn't survived unscathed. There are valuable technical conversations lost due to lack of support. I guess the lesson is to archive anything you find of value yourself.
@dynamic I may have phrased it badly; by "use", I meant the ability to republish it on the internet, not personal use.
How do you feel about the ethics of a block quote in a printed book versus a link to a Tweet? A retweeted Tweet can be pulled by the owner on a whim. A block quote in a book just sits there for anyone to look at.
To what degree do book publishers have an obligation toward not only book authors but also to the people who are quoted by the authors?
@dynamic IANAL; ethical vs legal implies two different things. I think it is unethical to attribute a quote from someone who confided something in private without permission. I also think it is unethical to quote someone out of context. Neither of these views may legally constrain publishers. As far as rights to pull context, I would ethically want to honor that right, but understand that a public post already grants permission to share. A link is more ethical, but ???
@lwriemen
I get the idea that people should be able to control their own posts but there are situations where I'm really not sure. For example, if I want to save off a copy of a conversation I had in a thread on my own Dreamwith, I'm not enthusiastic about the idea that I should need to have the individual consent of all participants. Is it really so unreasonable for me to want to be able to archive my own personal conversations casually?
Interestingly, if we were corresponding by handwritten letters instead, I would have possession of their side of the conversation and *not* my own!