yahoo is going to keep the messages but just delete the art and other uploads or attachments to the messages correct? although apparently they will make some groups private as well essentially closing access.
Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14
121–130 of 424 posts
Re: Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14
#122I'm genuinely curious from an ideological perspective, why archivists think all this material is worth saving? People often compare the shutting down of sites or the banning of content (e.g. When Tumblr banned porn, or now yahoo shutting down groups) to the burning of the Library of Alexandria. But there is a huge difference. The LoA held knowledge collated and collected by the best thinkers of the time. The Internet…
It is a lot of resources thrown at saving, not the equivalent of the Library of Alexandria, but the public toilet block graffiti wall.
Ask an antiquarian about the value of graffiti in the ruins of Pompeii and other archaeological sites sometime. The great historians of the day wrote about their contemporary culture, while the vandals and miscreants and lowlifes and commoners contributed to that culture. Having access to both sources gives us a much more complete picture.
You don't know what's worth saving at the time you save it.
Re: Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14
#123I'm genuinely curious from an ideological perspective, why archivists think all this material is worth saving? People often compare the shutting down of sites or the banning of content (e.g. When Tumblr banned porn, or now yahoo shutting down groups) to the burning of the Library of Alexandria. But there is a huge difference. The LoA held knowledge collated and collected by the best thinkers of the time. The Internet…
Even if we still had the Library of Alexandria, it may have shed zero light on the actual lives of citizens. Archiving content on the internet means capturing thousands of individual level perspectives and experiences. We don't know what will end up being important to historians 50 or 100 years from now. I would bet there are dozens if not hundreds of historians that would give anything for a record of their favorite…
For example: World War two groups where many of the the members have passed away by now.
There could be first hand accounts of history that has already been lost to time.
Re: Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14
#124I'm genuinely curious from an ideological perspective, why archivists think all this material is worth saving? People often compare the shutting down of sites or the banning of content (e.g. When Tumblr banned porn, or now yahoo shutting down groups) to the burning of the Library of Alexandria. But there is a huge difference. The LoA held knowledge collated and collected by the best thinkers of the time. The Internet…
We don't think it's necessary to preserve everything that's ever spoken verbally. We don't lament that everyday conversation is ephemeral. People are conflating internet discussion content with written content because it's stored as text. Whereas the more legitimate comparison is to verbal communication.
> We don't lament that everyday conversation is ephemeral.
I imagine you're not a historian. Neither am I, but I cannot imagine that there is a historian out there who hasn't lamented the ephemerality of everyday conversation (and even of apparently more durable forms of communication).
Re: Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yahoo Answers is an invaluable trove of insight into an intellectual class of people that I think a lot of us regularly forget exist.
We must never forget Ken M. https://gizmodo.com/ken-m-is-the-most-epic-troll-on-the-inte...
https://i.redd.it/yv9k5nes87rz.jpg
Not sure why this one kills me so much...
Re: Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If Yahoo Groups has a GDPR obligation now (and it's not clear that they do) they don't erase obligation that by spinning up a different company and dumping all this personal data into that new company - that would be its own GDPR breach.
Re: Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14
#127there are a few groups i was a member of like lifters https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Lifters/info which was an intensive technical development group in the field on propellerless, rocketless, jetless flight using only electronic high voltage.
also some of the politics groups were a great time capuslue for around the clinton/bush election era
a lo to f eartthquake researchers gathered on several earthquake groups as well including caltech seismologistics and advanced amatuers many of whom arent around anymore.
also some of the info in these groups can be used to defeat patent applications as they show evidence of public prior concepts and art.
yahoogroups consisted of somewhat more technically advanced users than modern website users like reddit etc because they were earlier and somewhat harder to use.
its a lot of good quality content.
also in the early days on these groups spam and massive controlled astroturfing account groups was pretty rare.
this is like losing 15 years of ancient Sumerian writings in a very interesting early time for the Internet.
Re: Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14
#128I wonder if a small scraper script that an existing member of the group could download and run under their existing, valid account, would work? Like a TCL language 'starpack' , a single binary Go program or something else? Can you script a browser to do some crawling for you?
That's exactly what they're doing, and then they get CAPTCHAs and accounts banned.
Re: Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14
#129I wonder if a small scraper script that an existing member of the group could download and run under their existing, valid account, would work? Like a TCL language 'starpack' , a single binary Go program or something else? Can you script a browser to do some crawling for you?
There's way too much data. Many group owners did not know of the shutdown (Yahoo was negligent regarding informing owners), and even if they did many group owners have little or no technical capability. That's why so many requested of the Archive Team that their groups be archived.
1000 members of a group each downloading 20 messages every 4 hours (a dribble that wouldn't be noticed) can pull down ... 20k messages in 4 hours.
Re: Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’d assume the law is smarter than this, because companies would otherwise continually spin of new corporations to get rid of their liabilities with no assets as a sort of lightning rod for lawsuits.
This is, iiuc, how the movie and construction industries work. Spin up a minicorp for every big risky project to shield the mother ship.
[deleted]