[ghaff]

I don't really worry too much. Between all the stuff that doesn't get archived, the fact that the sheer volume tends to effectively hide any single piece of information, and the frequent difficulty of connecting online identities to specific real people, it's not like most people have a perfectly discoverable complete digital record online.

[mikepurvis]

Which is fine as long as you remain anonymous and unimportant in the present day. It becomes much more of an issue if you abruptly become a person of interest, and all of a sudden there's a team of people motivated to go through that archive with a comb looking for the few juicy tidbits needed to publicly humiliate you.

And obviously this is already happening— in the Canadian election a few months ago, there was a big scandal where some pictures turned up of the prime minister wearing blackface at a holiday party he attended in 2001. And on top of that there was a pretty steady stream of candidates (some of whom were indeed booted from their parties) who were challenged over social media comments/posts made 5+ years earlier, especially on hot social topics where national sentiment has rapidly evolved in recent times.

Perhaps we will all just become inured to this, and rightfully be able to accept our leaders as human, judging them for who they are today and not past words and deeds. But is it possible to still retain the ability to fairly judge someone in the present while forgiving the past? Or will we lose the ability to discern the difference? The GOP's attitude toward president Trump does not give me hope on this.

[ghaff]

True enough. I'm probably pretty happy that nothing I wrote or photographed got online anywhere without going through an editor until well after college. And in pre-digital/smartphone days a heck of a lot less was recorded for prosperity than today. Not a lot of pictures from parties etc. even in my archives (and I did a lot of photography undergrad).

And, although I assume I'm in various Usenet archives, my participation there was always from a work address and was pretty tame. (BBSs mostly were too although all that content is gone anyway AFAIK.)

[mikepurvis]

I know there are already firms that do online history scrubbing of people who get some warning that they're about to be entering the public eye, but that kind of thing is probably going to be a major growth area. Even if there's content out there that's beyond one's ability to clean up, just being forewarned/reminded of its existence could be an advantage.

I could definitely picture political parties and businesses being willing to pay $$$ for an internet presence dossier as part of their larger candidate vetting process.

[mirimir]

You never know.

For example, about Sabu etc: https://sites.google.com/site/avalonlogsefnet/

    Oct 29 12:28:53 <Cambion>    we have logs that date back to 1993 and identify pretty much everyone from nickname change to nickname change
    Oct 29 12:28:59 <Cambion>    phone numbers, everything