> Once your data is on my machine, it is out of your hands forever.
The world isn't quite that apodictic. While the worst case may not change, its likelihood can. Information has always had a half-life that people had a general idea of, and that they considered in their decision-making. An effort specifically aimed at creating immutable, perpetual records will hurt both the people who fail to adjust, who will more likely see damaging old stuff coming up than expected, as well as the people who do change their habits, who are forced to restrict their openness and thereby lose whatever utility they used to derive from the previous, more liberal ability to share content.
The mechanism is identical to a change from traffic laws being enforced by cops, where some slack in the system was unavoidable, expected, and sometimes compensated for with higher fines (where the risk of being caught is too low), to some automated system where every single traffic violation is recorded and fined.
The world isn't quite that apodictic. While the worst case may not change, its likelihood can. Information has always had a half-life that people had a general idea of, and that they considered in their decision-making. An effort specifically aimed at creating immutable, perpetual records will hurt both the people who fail to adjust, who will more likely see damaging old stuff coming up than expected, as well as the people who do change their habits, who are forced to restrict their openness and thereby lose whatever utility they used to derive from the previous, more liberal ability to share content.
The mechanism is identical to a change from traffic laws being enforced by cops, where some slack in the system was unavoidable, expected, and sometimes compensated for with higher fines (where the risk of being caught is too low), to some automated system where every single traffic violation is recorded and fined.