Alexandra Samuel

So there is a lot of stuff about how much I love Twilight that is still on the internet if you Google me.

Well, it's my choice not to be there.

I support my husband 100%.

I'm Alexandra Samuel, and I'm a tech journalist.

I write for The Wall Street Journal, and I'm the host of the podcast Me and Viv.

I think that you need to think about deleting things you've posted as curation and not deletion deletion.

Mm-hmm.

You really never know what is archived.

You know, the Internet Archive keeps snapshots of all kinds of things on the Internet.

So, you know, you need to be aware that when you delete something, it might be deleted for you.

That doesn't mean it's deleted from the Internet.

And actually, I think when you delete things, it's always a good idea to back them up before you delete them.

Because, like, think about, imagine a scenario where you've posted something on Insta or Facebook.

wherever, you realize afterwards that you were kind of an idiot and you wish you hadn't said what you said.

And maybe you even had like on Insta a back and forth in the comment thread where the person pointed out why what you said was insensitive and you showed some capacity for movement and learning.

Well, maybe you want to delete that because you don't really want that to be something people stumble across.

Mm-hmm.

But if you delete it without archiving it, then if it ever comes back to haunt you, you don't have that evidence of you learning in public.

It's much better to make sure, like, take the screenshots, archive the thread, and back up all that context so that if it does still come back to haunt you, or even if you just want to reflect on, oh, do you remember that stupid thing I did in, like, you know, 2014?

Well, yes, I do remember that stupid thing I did because here's the screenshot.