New York Times: What Happens When Facebook Goes the Way of Myspace?. “Facebook earned more than $5 billion in profit last quarter, and yet it has spent much of 2018 trapped in a defensive crouch. This year was defined by brutal press coverage, internal strife, executive departures and unwanted attention from authorities. The company stands accused of various offenses: degrading politics; empowering despots; leaving users vulnerable to abuse; abusing its users’ data for profit. It is in a constant state of crisis such that its executives’ responses to scandals end up becoming scandals themselves. But the single event most pertinent to Facebook’s future, and with the most explanatory power regarding its recent past, came in January, when the company admitted its flagship site had found a worrying limit.”
digital impermanence
Access denied: 2 climate change pages removed from DOT’s website (CNN)
CNN: Access denied: 2 climate change pages removed from DOT’s website. “The US Department of Transportation appears to have wiped pages with information about climate change from its website. CNN found at least two pages previously dedicated to detailing the possible impacts of climate change on the transportation sector — a key source of greenhouse gas emissions — that apparently have been cleared from the federal agency’s website. At least one of the pages was designed to serve as a ‘one-stop source of information on transportation and climate issues,’ making it easy for people to find and access the information.”
Fast Company: The frantic, unprecedented race to save 700,000 NSFW Tumblrs for posterity
Fast Company: The frantic, unprecedented race to save 700,000 NSFW Tumblrs for posterity. “GeoCities, Vine, Friendster–communities live, thrive, and often die on the net. But the two-week timeframe in which content will disappear from Tumblr is unprecedented, says Jason Scott. He cofounded Archive Team, a volunteer project running software that scarfs copies of endangered websites for posterity. They are now scrambling to preserve an estimated 700,000 Tumblr blogs that are expected to partly or entirely disappear due to a new, broadly defined ban on ‘adult content’ announced on December 3. “
Make Tech Easier: How to Find Out When a Webpage Was Published
Make Tech Easier: How to Find Out When a Webpage Was Published. “When you’re doing research on a topic, it’s vital to ensure your sources are up to date. If you’re writing an academic paper, dates of publication are often required in the citations. The majority of the time, getting the date is easy: simply look on the site and find the “published on” date to find out how recent it was. Things get a little more complicated when there is no date listed on the webpage. When this happens, how do you know when the page was published?”
Archiving as Activism: Environmental Justice in the Trump Era (Internet Archive)
Internet Archive Blog: Archiving as Activism: Environmental Justice in the Trump Era. “In November 2016, the U.S. elected a new president who had sworn to roll back important environmental protections, dismantle the EPA, and who had once called climate change a ‘hoax.’ In the context of warming global temperatures, rising tides, and oil pipeline battles, a dozen colleagues at universities and nonprofits across the country got together online, and decided to do something. We were concerned about the continued existence of federal environmental agencies—particularly in their abilities to protect the most vulnerable among us—as well as the preservation and accessibility of important environmental and climate data. More broadly, we were concerned with the collective investment in public research and agencies.”
The Next Web: Reddit’s data hoarders are frantically trying to save Tumblr’s NSFW content
The Next Web: Reddit’s data hoarders are frantically trying to save Tumblr’s NSFW content. “By Wednesday afternoon, just two days after the announcement, a group was already hard at work attempting to archive the whole damn thing, or, most of it anyway. Redditor u/itdnhr began the process, collecting some 67,000 NSFW Tumblr accounts and compiling a massive list. He then shared it with r/Datasets, where other redditors stripped the non-working accounts, leaving 43,000 accounts. Preserving Tumblr‘s NSFW accounts, though, isn’t without its challenges, both in scope and legality.”
Disappearing movies and games: How safe is your digital collection? (The Age)
The Age: Disappearing movies and games: How safe is your digital collection?. “It’s not just video content, either. We’ve also gone digital in a big way for music (only 25 per cent of revenue in 2017 was from physical formats like vinyl and CD) and interactive electronic games (just one dollar in every five comes from actual disc sales). Only books are bucking the trend, with e-books accounting for less than a fifth of the market. You don’t have to be a devotee of Marie Kondo – author of the 2014 bestseller The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up – to see why. Digital libraries are just so much neater, tidier, more space-efficient. But are they as safe?”
