The Downside of Personal Platforms
Creators need to think carefully about their personal sites and build in a way that prevents link rot.
It's no surprise that I'm a big fan of managing your own platform. All creators should be in full control over their work by managing a personal website. It is empowering, and owning your website protects against platform collapse. But, maintaining a website isn't a perfect solution for everyone and provides the chance for link rot.
Link rot, or digital decay, occurs when links in articles or websites stop working. This typically happens because the page they point to either gets moved or the entire site is no longer online.
A recent Pew Research study determined that "38% of websites that existed in 2013 are no longer accessible." That's staggering!
Some major website platforms, like WordPress and Ghost, have tools to prevent link rot when pages are moved. However, these tools typically require user input. In other words, if you don't specifically include code that points the old link to the new one, it won't happen. Spoiler alert: most people aren't going to do this. Hell, I know what I'm doing, and I often forget about updating my URLs.
Even if you always remember to update changed URLs, it still doesn't prevent digital decay when websites simply disappear.
Owning a website costs money. Not a lot of money, but there is a cost involved. I spend about $20/year on my domain and $250/year on hosting. If I were to stop paying for either, the site would vanish. Any links pointing to my site would instantly break across the internet.
I've been thinking about link rot this week because I opted to stop managing my own Mastodon server. While I liked the flexibility of a personal instance (and Masto Host made it super easy), I was tired of doing all the things necessary to stay active.
Mastodon has a great feature that lets you move an account from one instance to another, bringing all of your followers along with you. However, it doesn't do anything for previous posts or links to those posts. So, now that the move is complete and once I turn off the server, that entire existence will disappear. It's a bit strange to think about.
Digital decay is a real problem and one of the downsides of running our own sites. We are responsible for ensuring our links always work and point where we want them. This also means we're responsible for making sure links that point to us continue working.
Honestly, outsourcing this responsibility is one of the benefits of a platform. Let them worry about making sure links work and pages don't break while we focus on creating. However, as Pew discovered, link rot is widespread, and platforms come and go. Maybe less frequently than individual websites, but it still happens.
There is no easy solution to preventing digital decay, but creators must be aware of the prevalent problem. It doesn't mean we should keep things up forever that we don't want, but it also means we need to be conscious when we choose to delete or move our content.
You can find my new Mastodon profile at JustinCox.com/mastodon, which I've set up to always point to my latest account (assuming I remember to update the code).
