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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

#11

Post by pmoriarty »

There have to be some Verizon or Yahoo employees on HN who are reading this.

Can any of you shed some light on why Verizon and Yahoo aren't cooperating with the Archive Team to archive this valuable historical content?

(If you don't feel comfortable commenting with your regular HN account, maybe you could do so with a throwaway account?)

Also, is it possible for any of you to bring this issue to the attention of upper management and help them understand how important it is to archive this?

You Verizon/Yahoo employees have much more power to make a difference here than anyone of us from the outside can.

Re: Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

#12

Post by Alex3917 »

tcd wrote: post #7
dessant wrote: post #6

What 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.

That doesn’t sound correct, given they GDPR doesn’t generally apply to archival products.

Re: Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

#13

Post by [deleted] »

Diagon wrote: post #2

Extensive 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 i…

[deleted]

Re: Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

#14

Post by amluto »

tcd wrote: post #7
dessant wrote: post #6

What 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.

This seems relatively cheap to fix. Spin off Yahoo Groups as a new corporation, and have that corporation subsequently donate all its assets. If the corporation somehow manages to get sued, it doesn't really matter, since it has no assets.

Or spin it off and sell it.

Re: Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

#16

Post by dbtx »

jedberg wrote: post #8
gumby wrote: post #5

What is Verizon’s motivation for taking steps to prevent it?

Cost savings, plain and simple. Less bandwidth, fewer servers.

That only explains a decision to take them down ITFP. What can be gained by shredding all that information? Maybe they aren't shredding it. Maybe they just want no publically available copies to exist.

Re: Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

#17

Post by jsjohnst »

gumby wrote: post #5

What is Verizon’s motivation for taking steps to prevent it?

GDPR, CCPA, , all are possible reasons to throw their hands in the air rather than do the work / endure the possible risk.

Very possibly the timing isn’t a coincidence, being CCPA is about to take effect.

Re: Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

#18

Post by Waterluvian »

jedberg wrote: post #10

It'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.

Yahoo Answers is an invaluable trove of insight into an intellectual class of people that I think a lot of us regularly forget exist.
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