I think this is part of a larger, important dynamic in society which isn't all that new.

The commoditization of digital technology has made on the spot video recording and streaming ubiquitous for better or worst. As a result, it has democratized citizen journalism. I use "journalism" here in the absolute broadest sense of the phrase as freedom of the press, through the 1st amendment, allows anyone to record and share events freely.

This isn't new since, historically, capturing and reporting on events has always happened organically through individuals and larger collectives. Whether that's through letters and missives, pamphlets, telegrams, diairies, manifests and so on. In modern times, photography and videography have added to that. And in contemporary times, blogposts, microblogging, and so on have amended that.

The big issue has always been this: authority.

When the efforts of private archivists are dismissed, it is always on the grounds of authority. What is their expertise that allows them making curatioral decisions? What are their motives and incentives to hoard online content? These are questions that can't easily be answered. Whereas the authority of public archives and libraries tends to be derived from their mission to serve the wider public: to record civic governance and to give the public the ability to hold policy makers accountable, but also to support the public debate and to allow reflection on civil society, past, present and future.

The same is true when we oppose citizen journalism against professional journalism. Where the latter has been perceived as authoritative on account of doing their due diligence, journalistic expertise and espoused core values. Whereas the same questions regarding citizen journalists are raised as well: credibility, authority, expertise, incentives and motives.

And yet...

The reality is that neither perceived as authoritive institutions nor intrepid individuals are exclusive to holding an absolute truth when it comes to creating, keeping and disseminating historical sources.

Regardless of how this gets spun, historical records always - always! - give a limited, keyhole look on an event. The historic perspective and the interpretation we give to sources is always limited by what got recorded, and what sources present to us.

It is only by combining sources, cross referencing them and an ongoing process of contextualizing that we can inch closer to a nuanced perspective of the past such as it was.

For instance, while the archival records of the city archives of Amsterdam may provides administrative details of the persecution and deportation of Jewish families during World War II, it is the private diary of Anne Frank that gives insight in the personal experience of hiding underground.

While the events around the assassination of JFK have been recorded in great detail by professional journalists and officials, the event itself was only captured by 32 on-lookers who had their film and photograph equipment. This included Abraham Zapruder. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_John_F._Kenne...

As far as contemporaries were concerned, as events unfolded, the former was just the private musings of a little girl and the latter was a home video of an amateur who accidentally was in the right spot at the right time. Neither of which were seen as source of huge historic importance. That only happened later on.

All of this to say that the speed at which, today, mere minutes into the event, individuals felt the need to record events as they unfolded shows how the exponentially increased complexity of our digital world has made all of this even more fraught.

This complexity has spawned massive amounts of digital data which will be very hard to assess and curate. And which will make it, undoubtedly, even harder to combine sources and interpret what has happened and what has triggered this.

As it happens, making curational decisions from a historic perspective is impossible. There just hasn't been enough distance between the past and the present to see clearly the former in the rear view mirror. Rather then focussing on curating and value attribution, collecting and safeguarding is of importance in the moment itself.

Any discussion about authority of sources and their historical relevance, or the capturing of online sources via private archiving efforts, can only happen in earnest as time passes and the mounds of materials gathered can be processed in earnest.