Want to Purge Your Social Media Timelines? Can You Spare a Few Hours?<br />The process was agonizing: I watched years of my youth play back in slow motion, including dated, satirical jokes and photos of myself wearing vintage clothing back when<br />that was a fashion trend, before the tool deleted each post one at a time.<br />While the social networks portray their products as time capsules of your fondest memories<br />and conversations, the experience of poring through past posts is more like rummaging through a digital junk drawer of good, bad and ugly moments.<br />And the hoarded data is just sitting out there for others to see, including potential employers who are doing background checks<br />and any enemies who may be trying to dig up something against us.<br />“It’s always there to haunt you.”<br />Read Kevin Roose’s column on three ways to rescue social media from the market forces that have created widespread unease.<br />The problem was, even after I used the app to scrub through my entire timeline six times, the tool missed about a dozen posts.<br />There’s no button to set ablaze a large swath of content, like a year’s worth or even a month’s worth of posts.
