ESSAY

Can we trust corporations with our culture?

Conjecture: Social media corporations are unable and unwilling to take care of the most comprehensive archival record of human interactions ever made.

What will be the grave goods of the future — a USB stick with unreadable files? A list of URLs leading to nothing? And who decides what survives us?

When you consider what a huge proportion of human culture is mediated, conveyed, structured and stored via digital platforms it seems unlikely that you or I will get to choose what represents us to future ages.

These platforms have become repositories for not just personal conversations but also collective expressions of art, politics and culture. The information contained in social media posts, tweets, videos and blog entries represents an unprecedented archive of human interaction, insight and behaviour.

But who owns it?

The entities responsible for maintaining this vast record of human activity are typically private corporations, motivated primarily by profit and operating under business models that prioritise user engagement and revenue generation over the preservation of cultural history. As I discussed previously, Facebook, Twitter (now X), Instagram, TikTok, and other social media platforms hold an extraordinary amount of data that reflects human behaviour and culture. But the question arises: are these corporations capable, or even willing, to act as stewards of this digital archive for the long term?

The situation is somewhat complicated by a recent move on the part of some to loosen the ‘libertarian’ stranglehold on major platforms.

While some may argue that the internet works best when it is ‘borderless’ and with no central authority, others counter that many of the online world’s ills stem directly from an ‘anything that can happen should happen’ attitude. They make an argument for greater sovereignty for governments in the way the internet is operated and exploited within their own borders — an idea that seems to appeal to countries like Russia, China and even Australia.

It’s easy to get the impression that the internet — and especially social networking — is a playground for whim-driven billionaires whose chief concerns are acquiring wealth and further inflating their egos. How attempts to impose tighter sovereignty, regulation and control will play out against unfettered digital capitalism is up for debate.

Commerce vs culture

At the heart of the issue is the conflict between the commercial interests of social media corporations and the potential cultural and historical value of the data they possess. Corporations such as Meta (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram) and X (née Twitter) make decisions about data retention, storage, and deletion based on factors that include server costs, regulatory compliance and the need to ensure user engagement. For them, data is primarily a commodity — something to be monetised through advertising, algorithmic targeting and user profiling.

For users, however, the data shared on these platforms often holds personal, social and cultural significance. Personal photos, messages and status updates can be of immense sentimental value to individuals. From a broader societal perspective, these platforms offer a unique view into how people live, interact and think in the digital age. Historians, sociologists and anthropologists recognise the profound potential of social media as an archive of human experience. In the future, researchers may want to explore everything from memes to political movements in order to understand the cultural trends and social dynamics of our time.

Despite this potential, social media corporations are not equipped or incentivised to treat this data as a cultural heritage that must be preserved for future generations. Data can be lost when companies fail, when they decide to delete or purge old information, or when users themselves delete their accounts. The transient nature of digital services is a significant threat to the preservation of this archive, and decisions about what survives — and in what form — are often made with little consideration for historical value.

Long-term value

In the traditional archival process, professionals such as librarians, historians and archivists curate and preserve records deemed culturally or historically significant. These experts consider the long-term value of materials, ensuring that future generations can access records of the past. The digital age, however, has disrupted these processes. Instead of experts, the decisions about what survives online are often in the hands of corporate executives, engineers and algorithms, driven by commercial imperatives rather than cultural stewardship.

For example, when MySpace — once the dominant social media platform — decided to redesign its website in 2018, it inadvertently lost all data uploaded before 2016, including millions of songs and profiles. This event underscores how fragile digital archives are when profit-driven corporations prioritise modernisation or cost-saving measures over preservation. Similarly, Vine, the short-video sharing platform, was shut down by Twitter in 2017, resulting in the disappearance of countless user-generated videos that documented trends, social interactions and viral internet phenomena.

These decisions are typically made without input from users or scholars who may recognise the broader importance of the content. Social media platforms, constrained by storage costs and limited by ever-changing business models, often view data through a narrow lens of present value rather than long-term significance.

The impermanence of data

Even when social media companies attempt to archive or preserve data, they do so with limitations. X’s Advanced Search function, for example, allows users to retrieve old tweets, but there is no guarantee that these tweets will be stored indefinitely. The platform is under no legal obligation to retain all tweets, and users have the option to delete their own content at any time. In the case of Facebook, content that is deleted or accounts that are closed may result in the permanent loss of posts, messages, and photos that could otherwise serve as valuable cultural artefacts.

Another issue is the format and accessibility of archived data. Much of the content created and shared on social media is dependent on the platforms’ proprietary algorithms and data structures. This raises the question of whether future generations will even be able to access this data in its original form. Even if the data is stored, changing technologies, formats, and digital standards may render it unreadable in the future.

Other perspectives

Despite the lack of intentional preservation efforts by social media corporations, scholars in fields such as history, sociology and anthropology have already begun analysing the vast datasets generated by these platforms. Social media provides a window into contemporary culture, reflecting everything from political opinions to social trends, interpersonal relationships and community dynamics.

One example of the potential for historical analysis lies in the use of social media data during significant political events.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, social media provided an outlet for people to share their experiences, frustrations, and insights, forming a digital record of how society coped with a global crisis.

And the Arab Spring uprisings were heavily documented on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Social media played a critical role in both organising and documenting the protests, and researchers have since used this data to better understand the role of digital communication in social movements. However, the significance and scale of social media’s part in the revolutions is a subject of hot debate, with many believing that it was massively over-hyped. Getting to the truth requires having access to the data, something that becomes increasingly difficult as time passes.

Anthropologists have also turned to social media to study online communities, identity formation and social behaviours. From the study of meme culture to the analysis of digital subcultures such as the alt-right or fandom communities, these platforms offer researchers unprecedented access to real-time human behaviour. Yet the long-term availability of this data is far from guaranteed.

The role of public institutions

Given the limitations and motivations of private corporations, there is a growing call for public institutions to take a more active role in preserving social media data. Libraries, universities and government agencies could collaborate to archive digital content in ways that prioritise long-term accessibility and historical value.

Public institutions have a long history of preserving culturally important materials, from books and newspapers to photographs and film. Applying these archival principles to social media data presents challenges, including technical barriers, privacy concerns and the sheer volume of content. Nonetheless, collaboration between public and private entities could help bridge the gap, ensuring that future generations can access the digital record of our time.

Digital preservation

Social media platforms, driven by profit motives and constrained by commercial imperatives, lack the necessary framework and incentives to preserve data for historical, sociological or anthropological purposes. While social media data holds immense potential as an archive of human behaviour and culture, it is unlikely to survive in a form that will be useful to future generations unless public institutions step in to take on the role of digital preservation.

Decisions about what data survives and how it is archived are currently made by corporations with little regard for the long-term historical value of the content. As digital platforms continue to evolve and new technologies emerge, it is essential to consider the long-term consequences of relying on profit-driven companies to act as the gatekeepers of our digital heritage. Public efforts to archive social media data, in collaboration with private entities, may offer a path forward, ensuring that this unique record of human interaction is preserved for future generations to study and understand.

TX Broswell is virtual curator at large for the Silent Museum.