Byte the Hand That Feeds

Late-Stage Capitalism's Grip on Digital Preservation

Abstract

The pervasive influence of late-stage capitalism in the 21st century has permeated all aspects of digital preservation efforts as well as the broader context of cultural heritage. This paper uses social media preservation to examine the intersection of digital preservation with capitalism's prioritization of financial gain at the expense of all else, causing systemic harm to individuals and resulting in archival silences and challenges to preservation. The privatized landscape of cultural heritage pervades every aspect of digital record generation and preservation, introducing hurdles to object content and context, as well as to the logistics and mechanisms of social media object preservation. This discussion explores these challenges to the "who," "what," and "how" of digital preservation through the lens of social media objects and concludes by discussing digital preservation approaches existing outside of, or counter to, the capitalist mechanisms that dominate the modern digital age.