Journal Entry 10/22

"The Internet’s Back-to-the-Land Movement"

Becca Abbe

Ever since I had my own google account (~2012), I have had a google photos account. This was back when google photos offered free unlimited photo storage so long as you agreed to use their low-storage format of compression. I stored every photo I had ever taken on this platform until 2021, when they announced they were no longer offering free photo storage. My aversion to spending any money on photo storage forced me to jump ship and move to... amazon photos. They offered free unlimited photo storage so long as you had a prime subscription, of which my father owned and I mooched off of. I uploaded all of my photos to this platform for about three years. Then, at the beginning of 2024, my father decided to cancel his amazon prime subscription. This forced me to finally get all of my photos in one place and realize that I could no longer avoid paying for storage. I moved all of my amazon photos back into google photos, and began paying for a google drive subscription.

This harrowing experience has led me to think a lot more critically about how I archive my life, my things, and how I express ownership over anything at all, especially things that I keep in digital and web-based formats. In physical life, I am a minimalist. I own very few objects, all of which provide use or meaning to me. I’ve used the same hydroflask since my sophomore year of high school. I have a houseplant that is the age of a toddler. But what is it about digital objects that has allowed me to turn into a web-hoarder?

When doing research about my photo-storage fiasco, I dipped my toes into the subreddit r/DataHoarders. The banner image is a simple quote: “What do you mean DELETE?!” I have data hoarding tendencies and I sympathize with the urge to archive everything. I also advocate for web archives that support otherwise underrepresented demographics or singular copies of significant work (UbuWeb comes to mind.) However, a chill goes down my spine when I envision myself falling down a full-fledged data hoarding hole. I do not want to continuously search and preserve as much web-space as possible in the name of my “data.” What I want to do is treat my digital things more like my physical things. They are objects too. And they deserve my attention. They take up space, energy, and resources.

Sorry if this sounds like the ramblings of a scared-straight almost-digital-hoarder because it is.