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Core Internet – what sites and services should we permanently preserve?
Looking ahead, the commodification and degradation of the Internet is continuing to take away digital resources that we have come to depend upon over the last 20 years. Whether it’s email or Amazon or YouTube, the decline of all our favorites has been well documented.
But we don’t want to live without these sites and services. Tildes itself is an attempt to preserve one such resource but in a better and more stable way. What other parts of the Internet deserve similar treatment?
Whether it’s open source eBay or community banking or nonprofit versions of Facebook… what would you choose and how would you go about preserving its character and making it workable in the long-term?
Internet Archive... precisely because it allows us to permanently preserve the valuable information found elsewhere on the internet. ;)
Speaking of which:
https://archive.org/donate
(wink wink, nudge nudge)
I feel Wikipedia is an important resource many take for granted. Yes, it has its flaws, and who knows what will happen when Jimmy is no longer at the helm. You could maybe eventually replace it, yes, but I don't really see any viable alternatives right now, and I doubt we could easily replicate it. It's the reason I donate monthly to Wikipedia. It's one of the very few organisations I donate to regularly because I feel access to information is incredibly important. For similar reasons I think the Internet Archive should also be preserved. I feel it's important to preserve the internet's history somewhere, knowing that we don't have a physical copy of the vast majority of what's on the internet.
It would be a major loss if something were to happen to both Wikipedia and Internet Archive.
Wikipedia is very flawed, but it's also a great place to discover interesting information one otherwise wouldn't. I feel like the Wikimedia foundation does a lot of good work.
Honestly, it's amazing it functions at all given the premise. Seeing as how Wikipedia is roughly dealing with the classic issues that most countries struggle with (how do we get everyone to contribute and not be assholes?), they've done a very very good job of handling it.
Doesn't mean there's not tons of problems and very legit controversy, just that the fact it isn't a tire fire is amazing.
Oh controversies? Please do share, I'm curious
I only know of the "anyone can edit it" caution but typically trust Wikipedia's info than any layman.
One of the big debates has been RFK Jr.'s wiki page. Specifically the introduction paragraph.
At one point it said something about him being a prominent anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist. When I checked just now, it says he has promoted anti-vaccine conspiracies.
People were pretty pissed about the first version, including people who hate his guts. Wikipedia usually requires that editors use a "dispassionate and impersonal wikivoice" so as to remain neutral.
Now that his intro paragraph is updated to be more dispassionate, people are arguing that his vaccine conspiracy theories don't really belong in his introduction paragraph anyway, since figures like George Wallace don't have their controversial views right up top, but rather down in a dedicated section of the wiki page. Usually under something like "political views" or "controversies."
It can get pretty heated from the little I've seen and pages can get locked.
Now imagine all of what I just said combined with egos, wildly different points of view on contentious and complicated topics, nationalism and disagreements about things like borders, topics that almost nobody understands unless they have a PhD., etc. It amazes me that Wikipedia is half as good as it is.
One that’s a bit lower level is that some editors become fiercely protective of the pages they edit, in a sense claiming them as turf. They will at times revert changes made by professionals in that field, even if that person was correct and the editor was wrong. I know Dr. Alex Wellerstein (of NUKEMAP fame) has said he gave up on trying to edit nuclear-related wiki pages due to this.
Here me out...The space jam website. It should be preserved tmfor future generation to see what a 90s website looks like.
It will be the Parthenon of our age.
But what about Time Cube?
None of them are so important. The value of the internet lies in the communication, which happened before YouTube and Facebook existed. Archive the valuable information, but the idea that a single service provider can't be replaced is an artifact of learned helplessness in those who should know better and ignorance in those who the former failed to educate.
If you mean "what types of services are those we should not allowed to be monopolized and taken down on a whim?", then probably all of them. But eBay and Amazon aren't anything special except for their popularity, and it's not like free unlimited video uploads are sustainable for any one provider to host, even for megacorporations.
I sort of agree with you, but at the same time I think that websites that exist as sources of information should be preserved.
Historical computer information is a pretty good example. A lot of information on early computers - the stuff from the mid 80s and earlier - is extremely hard to find. The documentation on them tends to be proprietary or otherwise protected by copyright and trademark, which makes them easy to get lost over time. There are tons of small websites from enthusiasts who have scanned documentation or reverse-engineered the workings of these machines and software, but there's no central repository for them; they exist on various personal websites that will all disappear when the owners decide to stop paying the companies they hired to keep it up.
What counts as "information" might be hard to pin down, though. There are some blogs, for instance, which provide key insights into moments of history, but there's a lot more that are boring vanity projects. And of course, the utility of the information we archive is another question that doesn't necessarily have a definitive answer.
Absolutely! And those blogs, from the art projects to the infodumps, the various wikis, etc., archive them all. That's all information. I was responding more to the idea of preserving "sites" and services. The fact that exampleblogone.com isn't still up isn't the tragedy, it's that the data that was shared on it disappears from access.
the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and other data portals like it (e.g. iDigBio, the US-centric equivalent for physical specimen data). https://gbif.org https://idigbio.org
Up to billions of biodiversity data points from around the world. Digitized natural history collections. Metadata, multimedia. Think extinct, or endangered species. Think of the extinct o'o bird and its tragic, lonely song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRaC2Rx3BVY). Think of how many more of these instances we might document - or even prevent.
Invaluable stuff. Basically libraries of Alexandria for biodiversity data. All running on "soft money"...
At its core, I think I would like to preserve all content. The place that the content lives doesn't need to be preserved. As an example, preserve all the content (posts, replies, etc) that are on Tildes, but this web site doesn't need to exist.
Other things that need to be preserved are the core services of the internet, until/unless a replacement is created and adopted that is not a walled garden. Email, nntp, http, irc, etc.
I agree! The value of the Internet for me comes from small, personal sites. I see no way to preserve those without preserving everything, and I think that's a big part of why the Internet Archive is so great.
I don't agree that YouTube has declined if you consider it as just a place to watch a video? Follow a link to a video and you can play the video.
Perhaps the ads are annoying if you don't pay to get rid of them.
Videos do disappear, though, generally for legal reasons, so it may be worth downloading them.
Two I'd like preserved for historical purposes: Fanfiction.net and Archive of Our Own.
Fandoms are a major part of internet culture, and those are the two biggest fanfiction sites. FFN in particular is like a time capsule of the internet with how old it is. You can see not only how individual fandoms grew and changed stances on characters or events, but also get a little glimpse of real world events through what's posted. Writers are influenced by the world around them after all.
I've actually been quite worried about FFN for a while, since the site is in bad shape. The UI is pretty bad, and whenever issues pop up it usually takes a while to fix it. For a long while I thought my email had become incompatible because I stopped getting notifications. Apparently there have been big issues there in the past couple of months, but I don't know much of the detail since I barely use it anymore. I myself have sworn off posting new works there because it broke and wouldn't display new stories or updates for about a week (while the app reportedly worked just fine). If FFN disappears though, a LOT of fan fiction will be lost.
Would you mind if I asked you to elaborate on what you think about the utility of preserving these fanfiction archives? Or even fiction in general. Who will these be useful to, and what for?
I'm generally in favor of preserving fiction, I just don't really have a reason why.
Besides the historic preservation aspect, I'd say the biggest utility is the outlet for escapism. A lot of people are stuck in stressful or inescapable circumstances, and sometimes just need to take a break from reality for a little bit. While all fiction works for that, fan fiction is one of the most accessible outlets. All you need is a device that can access the internet, no subscriptions or other devices, and you can read at your own pace so it doesn't have the same time commitment as TV or video games.
With all forms of fiction, some people will reread a story either for fun or because they're having a bad day and find it comforting. I've seen people stress out when a favored story gets unexpectedly deleted. Finding out it's gone can make an already bad day even worse.
On a lighter note, it also helps bring people together. Fandoms love sharing fan fics, both new and old, so having years' worth of fanfiction gives people a lot to talk about. I got pretty excited for a reader of mine who made a friend at orientation because they both read my story.
GitHub. They already preserved some of it in 2020 in the arctic code vault.
Just a footnote - WordPress has decided to offer 100 year personal archives... For a price, of course.
I would really, really, really like an alternative to dating apps/meetup sites. Something akin to Lex or the local events section on facebook, but nonprofit so I don't have to worry about Mark Zuckerberg deciding to fuck it up. Moderation on these kinds of sites is hard but really important, and we have the technology to connect people in a way that doesn't suck total ass.
To elaborate, I guess what I have in mind is a number of consortia or dedicated groups who identify the pillars of the Internet that we have used the most and those that are in most danger of disappearing.
Like the Mozilla foundation or Wikimedia, these groups would work on keeping things running minus the obscene profit motive that has distorted and destroyed so many of them.
Social media without the profit motive becomes very useful again. I’m a producer on YouTube but I would gladly get them to roll back their predatory ad policies, divisive recommendation algorithms, and slow-boiling of frogs of both creators and viewers. And while it might be true that no nonprofit could possibly host every video posted to it, perhaps a multitude of smaller communities might be able to.
I’m surprised that so far the Tildes community doesn’t seem as concerned about migrating off Instagram or Twitter to functional alternatives as they do from Reddit to here.
Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, Twitter... all the popular social media sites can be deleted right now and I wouldn't bat an eye. There are alternatives already, waiting for the popular bunch to fail so their names might actually become well known.
Agree on wiki, that is one that should be kept. Despite it's issues it's a source of collective knowledge. A sketchy encyclopedia that continuously updates itself and is provided for free and run off donations alone. There are many people today who have never known a world without wiki, well it sucked as encyclopedias didn't update fast enough and cost money.
Imagine if Google, Meta or MS got hold of wiki, what a terrible day that would be. If it's ever sold, I hope a copy of it's knowledge is released so others can recreate it if the new owners mess things up. Maybe it'll be handed over to Mozilla? :)
Mozilla can't be understated how much they work toward keeping the corporate greed at bay.
Add the World Wide Web Consortium and others that work on internet standards. I feel like the groups that standardize the internet with a goal to keep it free and open are invaluable.
You may be interested to know that they do currently provide access to freqently updated backups.
https://dumps.wikimedia.org/
That's awesome, should have known wiki had it covered.
It’s also surprisingly small, given the enormous range of topics it covers! If you stick to text only and don’t add in the audio or images or video, it looks like 20-25GB compressed can get you the entire website. (Note: I’m copying that information from the Wikipedia site itself, so I’m not clear on whether this size is the English-only pages or if it includes all the other languages too)
There's a ton of how to videos on YouTube that are extremely useful to first time home owners, car owners, etc. My boiler had a problem earlier this year and I found a couple of YouTube videos from 10+ years ago showing me how to troubleshoot and repair or replace the parts. I did the same thing a few months ago to troubleshoot my home's water pressure regulator. Without that resource I would have just lived with the problem until either my water went out, or the valve started leaking into my basement.
It's much easier to learn from a couple of videos than reading through hundreds of forum threads with no pictures, where most comments are just making fun of someone for not knowing the basics.
Ditto for me & YouTube. I had an oddly specific problem with a household appliance, and only a very old, German speaking man had a video showing how to fix exactly this issue.
Nothing else did it: manufacturer's forum, website & documentation; forums, google, Reddit.
Bless that man, even if I don't know German.
Interesting, what was the problem and do you have a link?
I'm not surprised, since most Tildes users came here from reddit (myself included), and I don't get the sense many used Instagram or Twitter all that much. And of those that did, and actually care about decentralization, I'm sure many have already migrated to Mastodon or similar federated alternatives to them.
Archive Team already exists and sounds like what you are looking for here.
Only non-profits or well bussiness-planned ones will survive. Endless growth is non-existent, impossible. If that means we will have to say goodbye to Youtube one day, then be it - it is unwatchable in current form anyway (due to how many ads there are).
So the question what we should preserve - sites like this one (Tildes), blogs of people who pay for domain and hosting by themselves, Wikipedia (whoch we can donate to), various open source projects (game engines, Kodi, etc.), some Github repositories that are heavily used in the whole world... We can do without sites like Amazon, Youtube, Fandom (recently mention on Tildes)... There are alternatives to many of them - countless smaller eshops or brick and mortar stores, Odysee for videos, smaller sites that concentrate on specific games... They may not be as polished as the big ones are, you may have to search a bit on them for the info you want, but you can definitely do without the big ones even today.