The archival decisions of the present become the permanent record of the future. A document preserved today is, in some practical sense, available indefinitely; a document not preserved is, after some interval, beyond recovery. The decisions are being made (by individual institutions, by national archives, by private firms, by the architecture of the platforms) and they are made without much regard for the people whose records they are.

What is being kept is, in the main, what is easy to keep. Records held in standard formats by well-funded institutions persist. Filings by listed companies persist. Court records persist. Land registries persist. The press of record is being digitised steadily, with the result that what was published in newspapers continues to be available indefinitely. Social media posts are kept by their platforms for as long as the platforms exist, and frequently for some time after, in archives held by national libraries or by enthusiast organisations.

What is being lost is, in the main, what is held by entities that fail. Smaller publications closing without succession leave their archives at risk. Personal blogs and websites disappear when their hosts close and no archiving organisation captured them. Older formats (proprietary software files, defunct platforms' export formats, physical media that has degraded) become unreadable even where copies physically survive.

The asymmetry has consequences. The record of a private person's formal life (births, deaths, legal proceedings, property transactions) will persist with high reliability. The record of their public statements and casual presence (forum posts, comments under articles, social media posts to platforms that have since closed) will persist patchily.

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The desk reads the present record as one in which the formal portion will outlive the informal. Planning for the future picture proceeds on that basis. What is filed will be findable; what was only posted may or may not be.