Comment by jrv
21 days ago
Exactly. Anything that's ever been public on the internet is never really gone anyways, and it's unsafe to assume so. This is similar to publishing a website or a blog post. Plus, from a practical (non-opsec) point of view, you can delete items (posts, likes, reposts, etc.) on ATProto, and those items will disappear from whatever ATProto app you are using - usually even live. You need to dive into the protocol layer to still see deleted items.
Your first statement is good advice, but is factually WRONG. Stuff does go away.
We know this from the other side of it, stuff that we WANTED to keep, but couldn't. Google deleting blogs, people not maintaining their own personal media records, etc.
Now. What is a good forward GIVEN THAT we do know that stuff CAN go away? My gut is that a good balance of "making personal stuff available to people who want to see it again" vs. "surveillance state" could make use of the unreliability of "the net." And that ATProto's "perfection" isn't all that helpful.