Abstract
In this article, we explore the long-term preservation implications of application programming interfaces (APIs) which govern access to data extracted from social media platforms. We begin by introducing the preservation problems that arise when APIs are the primary way to extract data from platforms, and how tensions fit with existing models of archives and digital repository development. We then define a range of possible types of API users motivated to access social media data from platforms and consider how these users relate to principles of digital preservation. We discuss how platforms’ policies and terms of service govern the set of possibilities for access using these APIs and how the current access regime permits persistent problems for archivists who seek to provide access to collections of social media data. We conclude by surveying emerging models for access to social media data archives found in the USA, including community driven not-for-profit community archives, university research repositories, and early industry–academic partnerships with platforms. Given the important role these platforms occupy in capturing and reflecting our digital culture, we argue that archivists and memory workers should apply a platform perspective when confronting the rich problem space that social platforms and their APIs present for the possibilities of social media data archives, asserting their role as “developer stewards” in preserving culturally significant data from social media platforms.
Highlights
In 2017, Clifford Lynch published a broad treatise on the challenges that algorithmic-intensive systems pose for archivists and the near futures of digital preservation in networked environments
While file formats, fixity, and portability of social media data continue to challenge archivists, leveraging application programming interfaces (APIs) as a means of extraction confronts the potential that archivists have in asserting their role in creating documentation and exercising rescue functions when facing the vulnerability of culturally significant digital information (Garrett and Waters 1996, pp. 22–23)
As with most information systems, there is a range of motivations for access and it is worth clarifying the types of users that participate in social media platform ecologies, including APIs
Summary
The digital preservation community has worked to develop standards, workflow, and infrastructure to manage a range of digital objects over time. Because social media platforms are built from software developed by private companies, they are able to shape their content in whatever way their engineers decide (Brügger 2017; Rosenzweig 2001) This can result in extremely different representations of social media data and significant challenges for digital preservation professionals seeking to document and manage an ever-increasing number of proprietary data standards. The End User License Agreements (EULAs) agreed to by users of social media sites may not allow for preservation and publication of certain kinds of platform data outside the platforms themselves In their Developer agreement and policy, in the section headed “Be a good partner to Twitter,” Twitter recently stipulated that Tweet IDs, rather than tweets themselves, should be all that is published by researchers working with their data (Twitter 2018). While file formats, fixity, and portability of social media data continue to challenge archivists, leveraging APIs as a means of extraction confronts the potential that archivists have in asserting their role in creating documentation and exercising rescue functions when facing the vulnerability of culturally significant digital information (Garrett and Waters 1996, pp. 22–23)
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