an actively maintained storage system will last forever (as long as maintained)
I mean, this is really my point. This stuff isn’t going to be maintained forever and will eventually be lost - even if it takes 100 years or more. This idea of future archaeologists troweling their way through Facebook posts isn’t going to happen.
Even much of what we know about the first civilizations in Mesopotamia is only because their clay tablets - which were never intended to be permanent records of anything - were accidentally fired and buried when their storage facilities caught fire. It’s possible that some modern forms of media might be accidentally preserved and restored somehow thousands of years in the future, but it’s a bit hard to imagine such a scenario. Especially when we’re going to cook ourselves off the planet before then.
I mean, this is really my point. This stuff isn’t going to be maintained forever and will eventually be lost - even if it takes 100 years or more. This idea of future archaeologists troweling their way through Facebook posts isn’t going to happen.
Even much of what we know about the first civilizations in Mesopotamia is only because their clay tablets - which were never intended to be permanent records of anything - were accidentally fired and buried when their storage facilities caught fire. It’s possible that some modern forms of media might be accidentally preserved and restored somehow thousands of years in the future, but it’s a bit hard to imagine such a scenario. Especially when we’re going to cook ourselves off the planet before then.
Most of the Chinese internet from the mid-90s to ~2010 has already disappeared.