The Spinoff NZ: The quiet deletion of the Islamophobic archives. “In the wake of the Christchurch terror attack, organisations around New Zealand have removed content which might be seen as part of the culture which mainstreamed and enabled Islamophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment. These range from promoters to media outlets to political parties, though few are drawing attention to what they have removed or publicly stating their motivations. However others which have long-harboured or propagated Islamophobic views have opted to leave them on their platforms.”
digital impermanence
Engadget: Internet Archive races to preserve public Google+ posts
Engadget: Internet Archive races to preserve public Google+ posts. “Just because Google+ is shutting down on April 2nd doesn’t mean your years of social posts will be lost in the void. The ArchiveTeam recently started caching public Google+ content to make it available on the Internet Archive after the fateful day. This won’t include content that was deleted or made private before the archival process began, and might not include all comments or full-resolution media. Still, this will ensure that you have some way of reliving moments years down the road.”
BBC: MySpace admits losing 12 years’ worth of music uploads
BBC: MySpace admits losing 12 years’ worth of music uploads. “MySpace, one of the first online social networks, has apologised after a server migration caused a huge loss of data. A message on its website says that ‘any photos, videos and audio files’ uploaded more than three years ago may no longer be available.”
Hackaday: Google+ Communities Won’t Go Down Without A Fight
Hackaday: Google+ Communities Won’t Go Down Without A Fight. “Google+ is dead. Granted people have been saying that much for years now, but this time it’s really true. As of April, Google’s social media experiment will officially go the way of Reader, Buzz, Wave, Notebook, and all the other products that the search giant decided they were no longer interested in maintaining. Unfortunately in the case of Google+, the shutdown means losing a lot of valuable content that was buried in the ‘Communities’ section of the service. Or at least that’s what we all thought.”
Sunlight Foundation: Three attacks on public information highlighted in Gov404, our new Web censorship tracker
Sunlight Foundation: Three attacks on public information highlighted in Gov404, our new Web censorship tracker. “Today the Web Integrity Project (WIP) released Gov404: The Web Integrity Project’s Censorship Tracker. Gov404 is a new tool tracking removals of online resources and reductions in access to content on federal websites, uncovered through our work and the work of others. We hope Gov404 will be a useful resource for researchers and journalists exploring how the federal Web is being altered, sometimes in response to policy shifts, and sometimes not. We’ve highlighted some of the most important trends we’ve found in our Gov404 release post.”
Gizmodo: How to Protect Yourself Against Digital Services Shutting Down
Gizmodo: How to Protect Yourself Against Digital Services Shutting Down. “While we can’t predict which apps, sites, and services are still going to be around in 10 years (or 10 months), we can give you some advice on how to guard against the threat of something you rely on closing down. Keep these pointers in mind, and you just might be able to minimize the damage.”
USA Today: Flickr extends delete deadline to March 12
USA Today: Flickr extends delete deadline to March 12. “Flickr, the legacy online photo sharing site, was set to start deleting members’ photos Tuesday, but it announced a deadline extension to March 12. Anyone with over 1,000 photos would have to pay $50 for unlimited storage, and that new policy still stands. Flickr says server issues and customer complaints pushed it to give people more time to download and delete.”
