This post is for anyone with a social media account - not just those working professionally in digital preservation - who desire to keep their valuable photos and content rubber.
Some quick pointers on saving and backing-up social media photos and other content
Social media platforms – including Flickr, Facebook (& Instagram), Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and other Google services – are designed for sharing not archiving. When you tick 'hold' to their User Agreements, you license your information to the platform to use how they desire (with some limitations). The platforms are then entitled to store, share, and sell your information to companies who buy data for consumer analysis. However, they do NOT have responsibleness for backing upwards and archiving your data. That means that if a platform introduces charges and limits access – or if it disappears all together – your photos and posts and conversations could be lost. Holding all this data is expensive for platforms – keeping those massive servers upwards and running is a huge expense. Therefore, they do non have an incentive to hold onto individuals' content if they are not making coin off their services.
These weather brand your social media content very vulnerable to loss.
But there are some steps social media users can take to salvage the content they want to keep safe.
Download Your Social Media Accounts
- Flickr, and many other platforms, provide a service to account holders to download their ain content (Instructions for Flickr).
- Facebook, Twitter, and Google all offer this service equally well. The exact instructions change when platforms update, only the 'download your data' option is usually found under Settings.
- The process involves requesting the information and then downloading a zip file produced past the platform.
- This 2014 Wired article gives a pretty skilful explanation of the general process.
- How agile a user is on social media will determine how often they should download their data. Social media marketing professionals or other highly active users should download their data every 3-vi months. Those of united states of america who are more casual users are probably ok to leave information technology every 6-12 months. Simply prepare a reminder so y'all don't forget!
In one case you have downloaded your social media account, you can treat the data like your other photos and documents (work contracts, tax returns, charter agreements, bank statements, etc, etc).
Redundancy, back-up, back-up!!!
- For the photos you share on social media, the best approach to saving them is to keep copies of them on your own device (such as a laptop) after you upload them. Just if yous don't have copies other than the ones on your socia media business relationship, you should wait through them and download the ones that you desire to keep (and that belong to yous).
- Continue multiple copies of your important photos and documents in different locations. For example, you accept a re-create on your hardrive or mobile phone, think most also bankroll upward to an external hardrive every 3-6 months. Alternatively, consider bankroll-upwardly content to a Dropbox or OneDrive or other cloud service account for the added bonus of access to your stuff no matter where you are! Or even better, do both!
- Every half dozen months or so, practice a articulate out. Digital stuff builds upward fast – if yous don't delete unused or unimportant files from time to fourth dimension you volition accumulate so much stuff it will get expense to shop it and impossible to manage information technology or find anything.
- Update your back-ups. You lot take all your important digital photos and documents backed-up on an external hardrive and in the cloud? Well washed! Unfortunately, you're not done even so. Digital storage devices go out of date fairly quickly. Some get out of date more than chop-chop that others – wink drives have a very short life span and are extremely vulnerable to damage – though some are better than others. Even external drives which are sturdier will fail afterward a while, fifty-fifty if you have a few years of relative reliability.
- Do your inquiry and motility all your files from old devices to new ones while yous can nevertheless get data off the older storage (archivists call this 'migration'). Nosotros now know that removeable disc storage is very short lived – CDs (and think floppy discs??) become easily damaged and at present most machines will non read them (and phones certainly don't). The same goes for external hard drives. If your external hardrive is getting old consider upgrading to a new device, perchance every 3-five years, depending on the quality of the hardware.
- The same goes for deject storage. Companies merge or get out of business – make certain you're aware of changes to the services offered by the cloud storage provider you employ. If services alter for the worse or go out of business organization, get your data to prophylactic and move it to a more reliable cloud storage provider.
- To sum it up – take responsibility for your digital photos and documents and social media content if you care about keeping them for the future. You may desire to evidence your grandkids those photos one day (some of them anyhow). Don't leave it to chance.
Yous may demand to human action faster than y'all retrieve – don't get out it also long or y'all risk losing your digital stuff!
Another resource
Digital Preservation Topical Notes (1-pagers on individual content types): this serial of Topical Notes includes private i-pagers for Digital Images, Social Media, the Web, and Personal Digital Archiving.
DPC Technology Sentinel Report on Personal Digital Archiving by Gabriela Redwine: the DPC Technology Spotter Report serial provides guidance aimed at information professionals, but some reports, similar Personal Digital Archiving, contain data relevant for individuals as well.
If you want to hear more about preserving your social media in the context of how digital technology is affecting our daily lives, listen to this podcast taken from my session at Chew the Fatty, Leeds on the subject of Perception of Time in the Digital Age.
DOWNLOAD HERE
Posted by: richardgoomil.blogspot.com
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