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In this episode, I explore the evolution of digital decay and the preservation efforts by non-profit organisation The Internet Archive, owner of the Wayback Machine. I look at instances of mass content erasure online— such as Myspace, Vine, and Gawker— before answering the question: Why is it so important that we preserve internet history?

Timestamps:

00:40 Intro

3:44 What is the Internet Archive and why was it created?

8:40 Challenges and threats to the Internet Archive

12:58 Lost social media: Myspace & Vine

16:04 The importance of longevity and information protection

17:31 The Internet Archive as a “check” on media

23:03 Archiving content & misinformation

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Sources:

https://archive.org/about/ 

https://archive-it.org/products-and-services/archive-it-faqs/ 

https://dn720406.ca.archive.org/0/items/wayback-machine-1996/The%20Wayback%20Machine%27s%20First%20Crawl%201996%20-_720p.mp4 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/01/18/the-internet-archive-turns-20-a-behind-the-scenes-look-at-archiving-the-web/ 

https://www.pewresearch.org/data-labs/2024/05/17/when-online-content-disappears/ 

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240912-the-archivists-battling-to-save-the-internet 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/10/18/internet-archive-hack-wayback/ 

https://www.npr.org/2024/10/20/nx-s1-5159000/internet-archive-hack-leak-wayback-machine 

https://blog.archive.org/2024/10/21/internet-archive-services-update-2024-10-21/ 

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/mar/18/myspace-loses-all-content-uploaded-before-2016 

https://mashable.com/article/vine-archive-website 

https://www.instagram.com/p/DEhf2uTJUs0/ 

https://theconversation.com/the-internet-archive-has-been-fighting-for-25-years-to-keep-whats-on-the-web-from-disappearing-and-you-can-help-163867 

https://news.gallup.com/poll/651977/americans-trust-media-remains-trend-low.aspx 

https://apo.org.au/sites/default/files/resource-files/2024-06/apo-nid326816_4.pdf 

https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/12/17/21024439/monoculture-algorithm-netflix-spotify 

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-45730363 

https://blog.archive.org/2018/10/01/more-than-9-million-broken-links-on-wikipedia-are-now-rescued/ 

https://www.wired.com/story/internet-archive-wikipedia-more-reliable/ 

https://blog.archive.org/2024/09/11/new-feature-alert-access-archived-webpages-directly-through-google-search/