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I don't engage with people who think we should delete everything to "save the environment" because their grasp of the issue is so pointedly myopic that their solution to saving the environment is destroying humanity.
"We keep everything in data centers and it's so terrible." Yes. It is. But it's an array of issues that are extremely solvable and don't require the purposeful destruction of decades of human creativity.
Analogizing to archives of physical stuff and libraries is bullshit. The things they preserve physically degrade and take up far more space.
@anarchopunk_girl@kolektiva.social@lethargilistic yeah Gerry McGovern's posts make me seething mad. They're so fucking myopic and puritanical and self righteous it makes me sick. Like, sure. Let's just delete all the old data. Who needs those wonderful old blogs and archives that aren't used a lot by the masses but that some people will find and love and use? Who needs that history? Who needs that record? Who needs the Internet Archive? Fuck off. I mean, he was complaining about fucking carbon footprint of HTML EMAILS earlier and suggesting we should send snail mail instead of emails with attachments, so I think he just hates technology and is using climate change as an excuse.
@anarchopunk_girl HTML emails are and have always been bad, but I didn't see the post explaining why he thinks they are.
But, yeah, his posts about this were so much "Here's the problem. Here is a nuclear weapon I propose for a solution."
@anarchopunk_girl @lethargilistic
Let's also remember that many really important artists had their work almost entirely forgotten for many years until it was "rediscovered" and popularised.
Johann Sebastian Bach is the exemplar who immediately comes to mind.
@lethargilistic if he really was that concerned about how much more CO2 rendering HTML produces then rendering plain text — enough to think that we should switch from HTML emails to text emails — shouldn't he also think that we should switch from HTML to plain text on the fucking web too and go back to DARPAnet? Also, as a friend pointed out: "what difference does it make compared to santos or whatnot fracking some indigenous community's foodbowl, or the palm oil industry aiding in the colonisation of west papua. why not focus on that stuff rather than tiny-ass potshots like diffuse emissions like that lol"
But more than any of that, I keep coming back to how horrible this take is — that the worth of some data, which are works of human creation for the most part, is determined by how often it is accessed or downloaded or read or interacted with by the masses, as if some percentage of access or traffic can determine the worth of something like that. It's the most stupid least-common-denominator democratic utilitarian take that I've ever heard in my life and maybe it's just because I'm a Nietzschean, but it makes me see red. Truly I mean it when I ask — what about all those hidden rare gems that few people find or watch or read or listen to or interact with but that are beautiful and amazing and great finds to you? The little fascinating pieces of History like old Forum posts and Usenet groups? Am I the only one that enjoys exploring the web and trying to find little known things that turn out to be amazing? I wonder what his opinions are on Libgen and Scihub and The Anarchist Library and the Internet Archive? Project Gutenberg?
@lethargilistic also how would decisions about this be made and enforced? Seriously.
@anarchopunk_girl Fucking lmao, I would not have guessed "HTML emails are bad because of the rendering time" in a million years. They are bad for data, but it's because they're several times larger than text emails (even before you get to images) and they add up because free email services trained people to not delete their mail. (See "how do we politically determine what 90% is?")
HTML emails are bad for a lot of reasons. They're bad for privacy because of image tricks that act as read receipts, they increase the efficacy of phishing, they're security holes, they interfere with listserv stuff and contributed to that whole ecosystem becoming unviable as utilities/social media, they're worse for accessibility in every conceivable way, blah blah blah.
@lethargilistic yeah HTML emails suck, but not because of the amount of CO2 sending and opening them produce.