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The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation

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21–30 of 323 posts

Re: The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation

#21
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have an archive of "330bn web pages" (quote from article). I'm sure those are not exclusively conservative. One or twenty might even be dictionary entries for "example".

I'm mainly asking the question because the article implies[1] that they're mainly archiving Trump stuff, not in general archiving misinformation. [1] yes, I know it doesn't say it outright, but I don't think it's a stretch to get the gist.

So you're criticising the article for making an argument that you realise is happening entirely in your head?

Re: The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation

#22
post #2

Does anyone how the Internet Archive get a bypass on DMCA? It's full of pirated games for example. I'm aware that it's one thing to archive something but anyone can download it as well, so it's essentially distribution too. Just curious how does it work. Personally that's how I get old SNES, NES, DS games.

I'd be happy if it had a copy of IBM Support Console Application 1.6.1 or 1.6.2 for OS/2 from 1999 or so, but alas.

Re: The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation

#23
post #5

They mention archiving a bunch of Trump stuff, but are they just focusing on conservatives? There's a bunch of misinformation on both sides, and if they're really after the truth, they should be paying the same amount of time and attention to both right and left. Somewhat related: it's sad but perhaps not inevitable that everyone basically has to do their own research to find out what's actually going on. These days,…

[flagged]

Re: The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation

#24
post #17
post #3

These guys are heroes.

I used to think that. Then I tried volunteering via their IRC channel and was met with some next level hostility. My read is: a) They're doing a job that needs to be done. b) They're relatively flush with cash from donors c) They're not nearly as efficient as they could be. d) The people there seemed more concerned about competition than collaboration. e) Probably most controversial: The organization seems like it ha…

Are we talking about internet archive or archive team?

Different groups/orgs.

Re: The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation

#25
post #24
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think that. Then I tried volunteering via their IRC channel and was met with some next level hostility. My read is: a) They're doing a job that needs to be done. b) They're relatively flush with cash from donors c) They're not nearly as efficient as they could be. d) The people there seemed more concerned about competition than collaboration. e) Probably most controversial: The organization seems like it ha…

Are we talking about internet archive or archive team? Different groups/orgs.

Edit: Hmm. Honestly not sure if it was IA or archiveteam. I think IA.

Re: The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation

#27
post #5

They mention archiving a bunch of Trump stuff, but are they just focusing on conservatives? There's a bunch of misinformation on both sides, and if they're really after the truth, they should be paying the same amount of time and attention to both right and left. Somewhat related: it's sad but perhaps not inevitable that everyone basically has to do their own research to find out what's actually going on. These days,…

They have an archive of "330bn web pages" (quote from article). I'm sure those are not exclusively conservative. One or twenty might even be dictionary entries for "example".

They can also choose not to include stuff in their archives, sometimes in ways that assist folks who've been spreading misinformation. For example, they've manually excluded all Snopes' content from the archive, effectively helping them memory-hole old versons of their fact checks. I discovered this after Snopes falsely claimed that an EPA rule tightening asbestos restrictions in the US was actually allowing prevoiusly-banned uses to be approved for sale and convinced a bunch of HN readers of this. A month or so later, the EPA pointed out that the very document Snopes had linked said that only uses which were previously not restricted at all could be approved for use and that the previously banned uses remained unconditionally banned.

Rather than correct their error, Snopes deleted the part of the article which claimed the ban was being removed, pretended they'd never said that, kept their original now-unfounded conclusion, and wrote a blog post accusing the EPA of lying for claiming that they'd made an error in the first place. Good luck finding the original article with the error online now. (There should be a copy on archive.is, but they're having uptime issues now.) The Internet Archive basically helped one of the trusted sources we're meant to rely on to spot misinformation rewrite the past to gaslight the US government.

The Internet Archive also took the decision not to allow government websites to block content from being archived or removed around about the time Trump took office. So they're very selective about who gets to hide their past errors like this and whose pasts are permanent public record for all to see.

Re: The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation

#28
post #2

Does anyone how the Internet Archive get a bypass on DMCA? It's full of pirated games for example. I'm aware that it's one thing to archive something but anyone can download it as well, so it's essentially distribution too. Just curious how does it work. Personally that's how I get old SNES, NES, DS games.

They don't. They do this with their Great 78 project as well. The way they go about borrowing collections, digitizing them, then returning them (which in itself is illegal reproduction), and then posting them online (also breaking copyright laws), is very sketchy. In in addition it is frustrating to watch (I hesitate to say "unfair") them do this when, say, university or publicly funded archives cannot get away with doing the same and are much more constrained in their methods. There is a whole other can of worms to do with long term sustainability and preservation but I won't get into that

Re: The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation

#30
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't, they take things down if they get a notice, but the majority of their stuff is out of publish, and the company that published it is defunct or doesn't care at this point.

I feel like this can't be the whole truth? I wouldn't, for example, start reprinting bestsellers and merely stop when asked. Imposing an opt-out system on others isn't really how copyright works.

The DMCA safe harbor provisions give middlemen/service providers some protections. So long as they are storing things at someone else’s direction and comply with takedown requests, they are protected from most copyright claims. This protection doesn’t extend to the person that provided archive.org the content originally.
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