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The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation

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Re: The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation

#51

Post by mcantelon »

SamBam wrote: post #9
taborj wrote: 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,…

What gives you the impression that they're "focusing on conservatives?" Do you have evidence for this statement? You mention archiving Trump's tweets. Do you think that they might do this because he is the President of the United States?

Seems like it's Forbes that's doing that, not IA.

Re: The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation

#52

Post by Rebelgecko »

ineedasername wrote: post #34

I like that the internet archive exists, but I don't like how they implement their opt-out policy. Sites can opt-out at any time, which I suppose is the correct thing to allow, but once they opt out then everything the Archive has gathered up to that point also goes away, which seems wrong.

I got frustrated with this one time when I tried to look up a defunct website in the Wayback Machine. The website was gone, but had been replaced by a domain squatter with a restrictive robots.txt. Because of the new roboots.txt, all of the old site was retroactively made unavailable. As time passes and more websites change hands, it would be a nice compromise if the default behavior was only to make retroactive deletions that go back to the last change of ownership in WHOIS data.

Re: The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation

#53

Post by tpmx »

jeromegv wrote: post #50
tpmx wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I introduced myself, told them about my background/experience. [Hyper relevant to the field, with architectural experience of services with 10-100X the amount of traffic of the IA wayback machine got (probably), working around mechanical HD latencies on a very large scale, etc.] No response. So, I went on to my largest pet peeve: The insanely bad response times for the IA wayback machine. I got temporarily kicked fro…

So your anecdote happened 15 years ago?

No, it happened 2-3 years ago. I was taking a break from working at the time. I wanted to do something meaningful. Like contributing to the IA.

Re: The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation

#54

Post by diggan »

ineedasername wrote: post #48
toomuchtodo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t go away, it’s just not public. This is to comply with copyright law. It’s still safely stored on disk.

Okay, if they have no choice in it then I understand. But as for keeping a copy on disk that practically no one can ever see, to me that strikes seems like a distinction without a difference.

I'm pretty sure you can visit the building that Internet Archive operates from (https://archive.org/about/contact.php) and freely surf/look at all the content, even the content that is not available from the web version.

Re: The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation

#55

Post by TomMckenny »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #21
taborj wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

All fact checking is opposed by the far-right worldwide (and is in fact a threat). Justification for opposing it is sought after the opinion has been formed.

And since denouncing facts themselves doesn't work in all societies yet, opposition requires quite a bit of mental gymnastics and fallacious reasoning like "all sides lie" or, with no justification, "fact checkers strategically target lies that serve my political preferences"

Re: The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation

#56

Post by makomk »

asiekierka wrote: post #42
makomk wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 prevoius…

Did they make the decision, or did Snopes ask them to blacklist their website?

Presumably Snopes asked them, although the notice doesn't say. They don't automatically exclude stuff from the archive for just anyone who asks them though - they're quite happy to refuse if they think it's politically important enough.

Re: The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation

#57

Post by TeMPOraL »

aleph- wrote: post #24
tpmx wrote: 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.

So what's the relationship between IA, the Archive Team, and the Wayback Machine? I am totally confused who is who here.

Re: The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation

#58

Post by toomuchtodo »

ineedasername wrote: post #48
toomuchtodo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t go away, it’s just not public. This is to comply with copyright law. It’s still safely stored on disk.

Okay, if they have no choice in it then I understand. But as for keeping a copy on disk that practically no one can ever see, to me that strikes seems like a distinction without a difference.

Better to save content for a future with more sane copyright law than to not save it at all.

Re: The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation

#59

Post by scrollaway »

ineedasername wrote: post #37
tpmx wrote: 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…

How did you approach them, what did you ask to help with? Not saying you did this, but there's a big difference between "hey folks, how can I help?" compared to "I noticed your page load times are ridiculous, I can get you to a place that isn't awful".

FWIW this is a fairly common experience. Jason Scott is quite famously a problematic guy. "But", he volunteers an insane amount so he gets a pass on a lot of his antics (hands up if you've heard that story before).

Getting kicked out of the IRC channel for pissing him off for basically anything is frequent. I used to hang out on IRC and saw it happen a lot. Eventually happened to me as well (couple years ago). I didn't go back; it's not worth putting up with him. Didn't stop me from contributing to the archive / AT / archival communities; in fact, shortly after I got kicked out, I was invited by someone else to a jason-scott-free community I contributed to for a while.

Re: The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation

#60

Post by scrollaway »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #57
aleph- wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So what's the relationship between IA, the Archive Team, and the Wayback Machine? I am totally confused who is who here.

The Wayback Machine is a project by Archive.org to archive the internet and allow users to browse old versions of pages.

The Archive Team is a community of archivists who do their own thing, but frequently contribute their collections back to Archive.org. There's a lot of cross-pollination between the two.

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