Summarised by Centrist
Economist Martin Armstrong reports on how major platforms are systematically erasing historical records and limiting access to once-public information.
Archive.org, a pioneer in web archiving since 1994, has faced severe disruptions recently, halting its real-time data collection.
The pause began on 8 October, 2024, following a Denial of Service (DDOS) attack. Archive.org issued a statement acknowledging the attack, which compromised patron emails and defaced parts of its website.
The service remains in a limited mode, with one librarian saying, “While the Wayback Machine has been in read-only mode, web crawling and archiving have continued.” But with archives paused, individual sites are now free to delete content without third-party captures.
Good cache, another web-caching service, shut down mysteriously soon after Archive.org’s hack. Google, too, ended its support for cached pages without an explanation. Armstrong suggests the tech giant could continue the service, noting, “It’s Google—they have the server capacity.”
This trend extends beyond archiving; Big Tech is restricting access to viral content and concealing information from the public. For instance, Joe Rogan’s interview with Donald Trump saw over 34 million views, but Google and YouTube made it “difficult to find,” pushing Rogan to share it on X (formerly Twitter).
