Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14
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Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14
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Re: Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14
#2Extensive history is about to be lost. Despite being broken, many organizations still use it. Examples from that post:
A police cooperative in Washington DC that was using them as a network to communicate with their respective neighborhoods with over 17,000 members.
A phone company in the UK that assigns phone numbers using the groups and now will lose all those phone designations when it’s deleted.
A Birding group in new Delhi with 2,000 members that has collected data and research on birds for TWO DECADES.
An Adoption group in France, that has been using it for years and years to communicate and share history and photos and more.
They also would have found: Numerous support groups for people who are suicidal or depressed.
Numerous medical groups for people to communicate more effectively with their doctors.
Numerous Vet groups with 24 hr care advice for sick pets.
Numerous support and help groups for the Elderly.
Numerous Historical groups for WW2 Veterans, Vietnam Veterans, and etc.
Numerous science groups that have used them for years and have all their research there.
Numerous fan fiction groups or arts groups that have shared their work for years.
Re: Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14
#3disclaimer: I'm a Member of Archive Team who's helping coordinate the joining of Yahoo Groups in preparation for archival.
Yahoo's banning of a large amount of the accounts we were using is a huge setback for us. In total we lost over access to over 55,000 Yahoo Groups, many of these will now not be archived and will be lost when Yahoo deletes everything on December 14.
Particularly disastrous was the loss of access to all of the 30,000 Fandom (fanfic / fanart / etc..) groups that were requested to be archived by members of the fandom community. We're back to square one now, and it is looking increasingly likely that we're only going to be able to re-join (and therefore archive) a small percentage of these groups before December 14.
(And now for the inevitable, shameless plug...) We could really use some help! If you've got an hour or so, we could really use people to come and complete CAPTCHAs for us. (A CAPTCHA is needed to join every group). Instructions at: https://github.com/davidferguson/yahoogroups-joiner
Re: Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14
#4disclaimer: I'm a Member of Archive Team who's helping coordinate the joining of Yahoo Groups in preparation for archival. Yahoo's banning of a large amount of the accounts we were using is a huge setback for us. In total we lost over access to over 55,000 Yahoo Groups, many of these will now not be archived and will be lost when Yahoo deletes everything on December 14. Particularly disastrous was the loss of access…
Have you considered using NordVPN for CAPTCHA bypass? They are a shady company, but their network of residential VPNs is impressive.
Re: Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14
#5What is Verizon’s motivation for taking steps to prevent it?
Re: Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14
#6What prevents Verizon from donating the Yahoo Groups database to the Internet Archive? What does Verizon have to gain from preventing the archival of Yahoo Groups?
Re: Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14
#7What prevents Verizon from donating the Yahoo Groups database to the Internet Archive? What does Verizon have to gain from preventing the archival of Yahoo Groups?
I can imagine it's easier and safer (from a legal perspective) to just delete the data and therefore no longer be responsible for the content. Twitter wants to delete older Twitter accounts because they're required to by law under the GDPR.
I mean, the GDPR makes things kind of difficult in this regard, and I suspect even archives are liable if somebody takes an issue with content they are hosting.
Re: Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14
#8What is Verizon’s motivation for taking steps to prevent it?
Cost savings, plain and simple. Less bandwidth, fewer servers.
Re: Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14
#9What prevents Verizon from donating the Yahoo Groups database to the Internet Archive? What does Verizon have to gain from preventing the archival of Yahoo Groups?
One of Verizon's spokespeople was literally Darth Vader. "Ma Bell has you by the calls".
Large corporations are not anthropomorphic entities, regardless of their disarming branding. Rather they are amoral bureaucracies, likely administered by people who have learned to ignore their empathy to get there. Verizon won't change course to accommodate the Internet Archive or general Internet community any more than a combine would pause for a field mouse.
Re: Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14
#10It's like the burning of the Library of Alexandria all over again.
We don't know exactly what was in the library when it burned. We assume it was all great works of intellectualism, but it could very well have been the fanfics of their time.