DURHAM, N.C. — Donald Trump's tweets may have been removed from the public eye, but thanks to a Durham startup, they will not be erased from history.
ArchiveSocial helps government agencies comply with public record laws. The software company functions as a modern-day library, CEO Ray Carey explained, saving social media posts from thousands of public figures for future generations to access.
Contracted by the National Archives and Records Administration, ArchiveSocial will preserve the tweets of Trump’s and dozens of other White House social media accounts. Apolitical in nature, the company will archive every one of Trump's posts, regardless of misinformation or public sentiment.
"The mission of our company really is to further open dialogue. Open dialogue fundamentally starts with trust and transparency. We can't have open dialogue unless we both have the same set of facts," Carey said, "I think it's important in a free and open society for everyone to have access to the same record... whether they're good, bad or ugly."
This is not the first major public figure whose social media messages ArchiveSocial has preserved. The company's founder, Anil Chawla, jumped at the opportunity six years ago to record POTUS 44's social media for posterity.
"Obama was the first social media president, so to speak," Carey said, "We got the contract to go archive all of the Obama social media so we were a natural choice when we competed for and won [the Trump contract] with NARA."
The majority of ArchiveSocial's subjects are not major political figures in the Capitol.
The company has worked with more than 5,000 local government agencies since its formation in 2011. Many of its customers are local sheriff departments, K-12 schools and smaller municipalities. There is more room to expand, Carey believes, given there are nearly 90,000 government agencies across the United States.
"It's crazy. There's a tremendous amount of data," Carey said. "The need for our public officials to communicate with citizens has only increased in the last year. Business is good." Carey said.
"We've seen social media go down to the local level. All the press really is around what's going on in Washington [D.C.], but [social media] is now something that is just a way of being." Carey continued.
The NARA will provide the access to Trump's suspended account. Carey was non-specific when asked about Twitter's role in the transaction but mentioned the social media giant is a part of the process.
Unlike ancient scribes painstakingly copying records by hand, ArchiveSocial's team relies on technology to extract and file the posts in multiple digital archives. Technology's role, however, does not make ArchiveSocial's process instantaneous.
"It takes more than a few minutes," Carey joked.
Carey did not elaborate exactly when the Trump archiving project might be completed, citing privacy agreements between NARA and SocialArchive. The enormity of processing up to 500 terabytes of data reserved for the project, he indicated, gives the ordeal a lengthier deadline. NARA, however, is posting the tweets on trumplibrary.gov as they become available.
Social media's impact on the 2010s shifted communication on multiple fronts, but Carey believes the same, explosive trajectory of influence it has made on society will continue into the future.
"I think it's the Wild West. [Social media] is very much in its formative years. I think, in one way, we're going to look back at [this time] fondly." Carey said. "There is wide, two-way communications available between our public officials and the public in a way that never was before. It allows you to have an open dialogue that is unprecedented in history. But, I think you need to do that in a way that is transparent, open and fundamentally on the record. That's what we do."