#digitalimpermanence — Public Fediverse posts

New York Times: After 31 Years, a Quirky Gay Gossip Website Shuts Down. This link goes to a gift article. “At around 5 p.m. on July 30, one day ahead of schedule, the DataLounge, a long-running online forum that became a gathering spot for (mostly) gay men, went dark. Just like that, tens of millions of posts spanning more than three decades simply disappeared.”

Gizmodo: Google Can’t Promise You’ll Always Have Access to Your Digital Library, but Can Give You a Small Credit. “Having your favorite films and TV shows in your digital library is supposed to mean you can access them anytime, anywhere. It actually means being able to access them as long as your digital overlord allows. Polygon recently highlighted how this problem hits consumers, […]

The Walrus: Google Search Is Dying. What Comes Next Is Worse. “The corpus is collapsing in real time. This degraded digital space should force a broader understanding of cultural sovereignty. Right now, the debate is framed largely as a fight over whether foreign mega platforms like Netflix, YouTube, or Spotify should support Canadian content. That charged conversation sidesteps the deeper […]

Stephen Follows: What just happened to TheNumbers.com should worry us all. “Its hand-researched data is the highest quality, tracking box office grosses, budgets, home video and streaming across more than 78,000 films and 236,000 people. It gets north of eight million visitors a year, and is treated as THE definitive authority by journalists, academics, filmmakers, prediction markets, and even […]

Current Affairs: Who Will Save the Internet From Disappearing?. “From deleted government records to disappearing music, our digital culture can be erased overnight. The Internet Archive’s Mark Graham and Chris Freeland explain what it will take to save it.”

Vimeo: Vimeo On Demand — Shutdown Notice. “After many years, Vimeo On Demand (VOD) is being phased out…. If you have purchased or rented content through Vimeo On Demand, you can continue watching your library until November 20, 2026. After that date, access will no longer be available. We encourage you to download any content that supports offline viewing before the shutdown date.”

Scientific American: History depends on records that weren’t built to last. “Chat apps, email, and cloud files have become the primary record of how power is exercised. Archivists are trying to preserve them before formats go dark or messages disappear without a trace.”

The Atlantic: Hegseth, Rubio, and Caine Had an Auto-Deleting Signal Chat. This link goes to a gift article. “The new release, which we reviewed, includes 13 Signal chats from the first six months of 2025 that have not been previously reported. The new records are screenshots of Signal groups that mostly lack context about when they were formed and what was discussed. The identities of nearly […]

Internet Archive Blog: Preserving the First Draft of History: Reflections from the National Summit on Local News Preservation. “According to the Pew Research Center, 38% of webpages that existed in 2013 are already gone and nearly a quarter of news webpages contain at least one broken link. The local record of our communities is vanishing in real time. This urgent challenge is what brought two […]

The Register: Claude Code users complain their chat records are being mysteriously wiped out . “Claude Code users are reporting that the app is silently deleting conversation transcripts – yours may even already be gone if you don’t know to change a default setting that the platform never bothers to tell users about.”

Collider: PlayStation Removes Access to 500+ Movies Users Already Purchased. “Sony is removing access to more than 500 StudioCanal movies and TV titles that customers previously purchased through the PlayStation Store, meaning they will no longer be able to watch them through their account after the licensing deal ends. The key word there is ‘purchased’, which apparently means nothing now.”

Daily Nous: Kant Studies Online: No Longer Online. “What happens to the articles published in an online-only journal when that journal not only ceases to publish, but ceases to exist? That question is raised by the case of Kant Studies Online, an online only, open-access philosophy journal that published articles between 2011 and 2016, the website of which is no longer accessible. The journal […]

BBC: The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games. “Can a company take away something you’ve already paid for? In the world of online video games, some already do. Publishers can decide to switch off a game’s servers, often leaving it effectively unplayable. Stop Killing Games, a growing consumer rights campaign started by American YouTuber Ross Scott in 2024, is challenging […]

The Guardian: Consumer protection agency deletes thousands of pages as Trump administration seeks to dismantle it. “The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau deleted at least 2,200 webpages from its website last month, a move advocates say is part of the Trump administration’s latest effort to dismantle the federal consumer finance watchdog.”

Internet Archive Blog: Keep the News in the Wayback Machine. “Fight for the Future has launched an open letter calling on major media organizations to work with the Internet Archive to ensure the news remains preserved and accessible in the Wayback Machine.”

Techdirt: Stop Killing Games Gets Its First American Legislative Effort Out Of Committee in California. “I’ve written quite a bit about the Stop Killing Games movement, in no small part because I think it’s way more important than most people think. Preserving cultural output is both important and, frankly, a key part of the bargain that is supposed to be copyright law.”

NBC News: Justice Department deletes press releases on charges against Jan. 6 rioters. “The Justice Department has removed press releases detailing the charges against hundreds of individuals who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot from its website, the department confirmed Friday.”

NiemanLab: More than 340 local news outlets are limiting the Internet Archive’s access to their journalism. “Our new analysis shows that more than 340 local news sites across the United States are now limiting the Internet Archive’s ability to access and preserve their stories. Many sites in our sample are owned by five of the seven largest local news publishers in the country: USA Today […]

Engadget: California lawmakers are working on a bill to preserve access to online games . “A bill that could require game publishers to offer a way to access online games after they are no longer actively supported is making its way to a floor vote in the California State Assembly, the first step on its way to becoming law, Ars Technica reports.”

New York Times: Thousands of FiveThirtyEight Articles Seemingly Vanish From the Internet . This link goes to a gift article. “An archived website of FiveThirtyEight, a data journalism publication known for its polling analysis and election models, is now redirecting readers to ABC News, its owner and former host. As a result, many thousands of articles stretching back to FiveThirtyEight’s […]

Kotaku: Failed Online Shooter Won’t Shut Down Because ‘Games Are Art And Deserve To Be Preserved’. “Blindfire was released back in October 2024 with a unique hook: It was an online first-person shooter set in the dark and was built around finding your enemies or remaining out of their sight. Sadly for developer Double Eleven, it never found much of an audience. Now, a year after its last […]

Mashable: California lawmakers explore ways to preserve access to online games. “California lawmakers are deliberating a proposed bill, known as the ‘Protect Our Games Act,’ that would require publishers to continue offering access to online games even after developers stop supporting them, according to Ars Technica.”

Internet Archive Blog: Internet Archive Switzerland: Expanding a Global Mission to Preserve Knowledge. “Thirty years ago, Brewster Kahle founded the Internet Archive with an ambitious goal: Universal Access to All Knowledge. Today, that mission continues to grow with an exciting new chapter: the launch of the Internet Archive Switzerland, a non-profit foundation based in St. Gallen.”

KitGuru: Forza Forums celebrates its 20th anniversary by shutting down the site. “While a disappointing conclusion, what is perhaps even more unfortunate is the fact that ‘we do not plan to archive or replace the Forums in their current form’ – meaning 20 years of fan discourse will be wiped from the internet.”

Tom’s Hardware: Internet archival sites struggling to preserve the internet because of skyrocketing hard drive prices due to the AI boom — Wayback Machine and Wikimedia punished by stratospheric storage pricing and stricter anti-scraping measures blocking the wrong bots. “The internet is getting harder to archive because the AI boom has caused a storage crisis, with both NAND and mechanical […]

Washington University in St. Louis: New Guide Helps Poets Preserve Digital Work. “The guide provides practical recommendations that poets and other writers can implement immediately to support the longevity of their work. As contemporary creative practice increasingly takes place in digital environments, poets face new challenges in managing, organizing, and preserving their files.”

The Gamer: Halo Fan Project Has Archived Millions Of Old Gamertags, Stats. “As part of a sweeping sunset, 343 Studios, now rebranded to Halo Studios, announced back in 2021 that Halo 3, along with Halo 3: ODST, Halo: Reach, Halo 4, Halo Wars, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, and Spartan Assault would all have their servers shutdown, though the offline campaign functionality remained. That […]

Engadget: The Stop Killing Games campaign will set up NGOs in the EU and US. “In a YouTube video, the campaign’s creator, Ross Scott, explained that organizers are planning to establish two non-governmental organizations, one for the European Union and another for the US. According to Scott, these NGOs would allow for ‘long-term counter lobbying’ when publishers end support for certain video […]

Found while I was looking for something else: Delisted Games Database – Updated Official Tracker of Removed Games. “Every year, hundreds of video games vanish from digital storefronts erased by licensing disputes, server shutdowns, or platform removals. For players, that means lost purchases and broken collections. For preservationists, it’s a cultural crisis: entire chapters of gaming […]

Axios: Inside the Internet Archive’s race to save federal webpages. “Government webpages on USAID, DEI and gender, among others, simply ‘got wiped out,’ Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle told visitors during a recent tour of their headquarters in the Richmond District.”