What’s on the internet, stays on the internet. It may seem like this is common knowledge, but to this day people are posting embarrassing pictures and videos of themselves and whining about it later when they can’t delete it.
The New York Times put out an article a couple of years ago called “Erasing the Digital Past.” It talks about how its important to think about what you post before you post it with example of people who’s lives are essentially ruined because of negative content on the internet.
So everyone should know that what you post on the internet will always be there, but is this really true? Does it really stay there forever or is there some way to take it off the internet forever?
Some sites say that they have come up with ways that can delete a post forever. An example of this is an article from lifehacker.com entitled “How to Fix Internet Embarrassments and Improve Your Online Reputation.” The article talks about how to remove content from sites like Facebook or Google. On Facebook, it’s easy to delete content that you’ve posted yourself, but it’s a lot harder to delete content that someone else posted. You can politely ask the person that posted them to delete, but that usually doesn’t happen. The other option is to contact Facebook either by filing a complaint and/or talking to them directly. However, chances are that Facebook won’t help you unless it’s an extreme cases.
Even if you try do all of this, the content can still be there. The New York Times article that was stated before states that once content is posted, “the incriminating data had embedded itself into the nether reaches of cyberspace, etched into archives, algorithms and a web of hyperlinks. “
Another thing that you can try to do is to try to hide the content with positive content. If you overflow the search results with other social networking and blogging sites then the negative content will be beyond the first or second page which is where most people stop looking. Both articles suggests this and it seems like it’s the only option.
To conclude, the phrase “what happens on the internet, stays on the internet” is true. It’s almost impossible to delete content forever. So, everyone should think twice about what they post on internet because it could change their life forever.
GinaFarotte 