www-theverge-com-pag815.txt (21897B)
1 [1]Skip to main content 2 [2]The Verge logo.[3]The Verge homepage 3 4 • [4]The Verge homepageThe Verge logo./ 5 • [5]Tech/ 6 • [6]Reviews/ 7 • [7]Science/ 8 • [8]Entertainment/ 9 • [9]AI/ 10 • MoreMenu 11 12 [11]The Verge logo. 13 Menu 14 15 • [13]Internet Culture 16 17 How to disappear completely 18 19 The internet is forever. But also, it isn’t. What happens to our culture when 20 websites start to vanish at random? 21 22 By [14]s.e. smith 23 24 Dec 18, 2024, 1:00 PM UTC 25 26 Share this story 27 28 • 29 • 30 • 31 32 [How_to_dis] 33 Michelle Rohn / The Verge 34 35 Every few days, I open my inbox to an email from someone asking after an old 36 article of mine that they can’t find. They’re graduate students, activists, 37 teachers setting up their syllabus, researchers, fellow journalists, or simply 38 people with a frequently revisited bookmark, not understanding why a link 39 suddenly goes nowhere. They’re people who searched the internet and found 40 references, but not the article itself, and are trying to track an idea down to 41 its source. They’re readers trying to understand the throughlines of society 42 and culture, ranging from peak feminist blogging of the 2010s to shifts in 43 cultural attitudes about disability, but coming up empty. 44 45 This is not a problem unique to me: a recent Pew Research Center study on 46 digital decay found that [19]38 percent of webpages accessible in 2013 are not 47 accessible today. This happens because pages are taken down, URLs are changed, 48 and entire websites vanish, as in the case of [20]dozens of scientific journals 49 and all the critical research they contained. This is especially acute for 50 news: researchers at Northwestern University estimate we will lose [21] 51 one-third of local news sites by 2025, and the digital-first properties that 52 have risen and fallen are nearly impossible to count. The internet has become a 53 series of lacunas, spaces where content used to be. Sometimes it is me 54 searching for that content, spending an hour reverse engineering something in 55 the Wayback Machine because I want to cite it, or read the whole article, not 56 just a quote in another publication, an echo of an echo. It’s reached the point 57 where I upload PDFs of my clips to [22]my personal website in addition to 58 linking to them to ensure they’ll remain accessible (until I stop paying my 59 hosting fees, at least), thinking bitterly of the volume of work I’ve lost to 60 shuttered websites, restructured links, hacks that were never repaired, servers 61 disrupted, sometimes accompanied by false promises that an archive would be 62 restored and maintained. 63 64 Who am I, if not my content? 65 66 When you describe yourself as a “writer” but your writing has become hard to 67 find, it creates a crisis not just of profession, but identity. Who am I, if 68 not my content? It is hard not to feel the disappearance of creative work as a 69 different kind of death of the author, one in which readers can’t interpret my 70 work because they can’t find it. It is a sort of fading away, of losing shape 71 and relevance. 72 73 We live in a content era, the creator economy, in which everyone and their 74 grandparent has turned into a “content creator.” We are watching the internet 75 slip away as websites and apps rise and fall, swallowed by private equity, 76 shuttered by burnout, or simply frozen in time — taking with it our memories, 77 our cultural phenomena, our memes. In theory, as we like to tell Zoomers who 78 are putting it all out there, “the internet is forever.” Employers and enemies 79 can and will ferret out your worst moments on the internet, and even things 80 that were, in theory, deleted can be resurfaced on mirrored sites and archives, 81 with screenshots of half-forgotten forums. And yet, in reality, things can 82 disappear as though they never were, sometimes quite suddenly. The same 83 accessibility and low barriers to entry, that same easy come — I can set up a 84 website in the time it takes me to finish this sentence — can also morph into 85 an easy go. A social media account can be locked or banned for a real or 86 perceived terms of service violation in the blink of an eye, a venerable 87 feminist publication can [23]abruptly vanish, a news startup can [24]wink out 88 of existence just as quickly as it rose to prominence, and news organizations 89 can nuke [25]decades of music journalism or [26]TV archives at the flick of a 90 switch. Restructured links and a [27]fundamentally broken search infrastructure 91 can shift an article out of view to all but the most determined. I wonder, for 92 example, how long my [28]National Magazine Award-winning column at Catapult 93 will remain accessible online, living as it does [29]at the whims of its owner, 94 an eccentric billionaire. 95 96 The loss of content is not a new phenomenon. It’s endemic to human societies, 97 marked as we are by an ephemerality that can be hard to contextualize from a 98 distance. For every Shakespeare, hundreds of other playwrights lived, wrote, 99 and died, and we remember neither their names nor their words. (There is also, 100 of course, a Marlowe, for the girlies who know.) For every Dickens, uncountable 101 penny dreadfuls on cheap newsprint didn’t withstand the test of decades. For 102 every iconic cuneiform tablet bemoaning poor customer service, countless more 103 have been destroyed over the millennia. 104 105 Two hands holding two postcards, the front of which shows a goblin at an 106 old-fashioned computer and reads: Content Goblins.Two hands holding two 107 postcards, the front of which shows a goblin at an old-fashioned computer and 108 reads: Content Goblins. 109 Two hands holding two postcards, the front of which shows a goblin at an 110 old-fashioned computer and reads: Content Goblins.Two hands holding two 111 postcards, the front of which shows a goblin at an old-fashioned computer and 112 reads: Content Goblins. 113 114 This story is featured in [30]Content Goblins, a limited-run print magazine 115 about “content” and the people who “make” it. Get your copy of this gorgeous / 116 deranged publication by [31]signing up for an annual subscription to The Verge, 117 while supplies last. 118 119 This is a particularly complex problem for digital storage. For every 120 painstakingly archived digital item, there are also hard drives corrupted, 121 content wiped, media formats that are effectively unreadable and unusable, as I 122 discovered recently when I went on a hunt for a reel-to-reel machine to recover 123 some audio from the 1960s. Every digital media format, from the Bernoulli Box 124 to the racks of servers [32]slowly boiling the planet, is ultimately doomed to 125 obsolescence as it’s supplanted by the next innovation, with [33]even the 126 Library of Congress struggling to preserve digital archives. 127 128 Historical content can be an incredibly informative resource, telling us how 129 people lived and thought. But we must remember that it’s a small fraction of 130 contemporaneous material that survives, even as we hope, of course, that it’s 131 our own existence that is ultimately memorialized. Sometimes it is through the 132 gaps that we read history or are forced to consider why some things are more 133 likely to persist than others, are more remembered than others, why other 134 histories are subject to active suppression, as we’re seeing across the United 135 States with legislation targeting the accurate teaching of history. 136 137 So why does the present situation feel so severe? The shortest and most obvious 138 answer is that things feel more real when we are living through them and they 139 affect us directly; what we understand intellectually about history hits 140 different when we’re living it, especially for the “Extremely Online” among us 141 who are constantly saturated in a steady supply of mourning over the death of 142 the internet and “you might be a millennial if [you recognize a floppy disc / 143 landline phone / LAN party]” memes. 144 145 The longer answer speaks to the arc of historical trends that are fundamentally 146 reshaping humanity, with the boom in artificial intelligence standing out as a 147 particularly brutal contributor to our present state. While many have been 148 enjoying a little AI, as a treat, dabbling in ChatGPT to help draft an angry 149 letter to the utility company, or goofing around with increasingly unhinged 150 Midjourney prompts, we are unwittingly contributing to the engine of our own 151 despair. 152 153 There’s a phenomenon that happens where I live along the rugged coastline of 154 Northern California, when conditions are right, or more accurately, wrong: a 155 layer of green, foamy scum clings to the surface of the ocean so that when the 156 waves wash your footprints away, they are replaced by a layer of vile, reeking 157 slime dotted by writhing marine organisms. This is, at times, how the internet 158 feels right now. We are being slowly erased, but instead of passing peacefully 159 into the vale with the ebb and flow of soothing waves, we are being actively 160 replaced by garbage. 161 162 How comfortable are we with the disappearance of entire swaths of careers and 163 artistic pursuits? 164 165 Garbage created by an industry broadly referring to itself as “artificial 166 intelligence” — a term so overused that it is starting to lose all meaning — 167 devouring and then regurgitating our content, a froth of green, smelly foulness 168 that rests on the sands where people once walked. I am starting to disassociate 169 every time I get a new notification about terms of service in which I learn 170 that my content will be used to train yet another large language model designed 171 to replace me, as corporations attempt to replace creativity and joy with a 172 mountain of trash. I attempt to negotiate for protective clauses in contracts 173 and am rejected, lie awake at night wondering how much of my work has already 174 been folded into systems generating billions in profits for their makers on the 175 backs of our labor, sigh every time I log in to LinkedIn and all the writing 176 jobs are actually advertisements for training the latest AI hotness. 177 178 The comparison with our green tides runs deeper than that, as AI is literally 179 [34]burning up the world in the name of profits, driving the climate change 180 that [35]causes toxic algae blooms. Much like the British tossing papyrus and 181 mummies into the hungry maws of steam engines, we are destroying history and 182 culture to fuel the empire, and the empire is profit. The result is [36] 183 internet poisoning, a landscape saturated in misinformation and AI garbage — at 184 best [37]comical, at worst, [38]lethal. For future generations interested in 185 knowing more about the world we live in, it has the potential to make it nearly 186 impossible to untangle fact from fiction, art from fakery. There is something 187 deeply offensive in knowing not only that hundreds of thousands of my words 188 have vanished, but that some LLM is probably crawling through the tattered 189 fragments to churn out mockeries of the very real sources, research, and energy 190 that once backed those words. They’ll be vomited back on the shores of my 191 browser, squirming and stinking. 192 193 There is also a strange and bitter loss of autonomy in watching humans slowly 194 disappear beyond a veil of AI murk and inherently unstable digital storage, a 195 dark twist at a moment when so many of us are fighting for our right to exist 196 in our own bodies. We have come to accept, without reading, the terms of 197 service that assign the rights of our content to the platforms we post on, and 198 when those platforms abruptly close or [39]delete our content or lock us out of 199 our accounts, we mourn the loss as we receive a firsthand lesson in what it 200 means to sign our digital rights away. When I choose to delete my tweets, take 201 my self-hosted blog off the internet, or set up a finsta, I’m in control of my 202 data destiny, but the loss of control when archives are maintained by the 203 winners serves to make me feel small, forgotten, easily disposed of. 204 205 The notion that everything that ever has been and ever will be on the internet 206 will always be there — potentially to haunt us — feels less true in an era when 207 data is constantly disappearing. The internet is not, in fact, forever; 208 sometimes the zombie of a bad take will linger, sure, but just as probably, 209 we’ll vanish, as I recently discovered when I realized that one of my Twitter 210 accounts, active from 2009–2023, had been wiped because I hadn’t logged in 211 recently. An untold number of bon mots, educational threads, exchanges with 212 fellow users, photographs, and of course, misinformed, shitty opinions I’d 213 rather forget, simply gone, into the ether. It felt, perhaps irrationally, like 214 being erased, like that person had never been. 215 216 I think sometimes of the [40]Voyager Golden Records, spinning endlessly into 217 eternity, a cry into the void that features a selection of carefully curated 218 human experiences in an attempt to communicate the vastness of Earth’s history 219 and culture to other beings. The offerings, selected by a committee led by Carl 220 Sagan, include a photograph of a woman in a grocery store, the sound of 221 footsteps, a sampling from The Magic Flute, an image of an astronaut in space, 222 a human heartbeat. The process of picking and choosing what to include must 223 have been agonizing and fraught, limited not just by storage considerations, 224 but politics, pressure, and cultural hegemony. The result is a highly 225 fragmented, erratic, selective view of what it means to be human, more a 226 testimony of our limitations than of our potential, a reminder that archival 227 work is not neutral, and a powerful case for diversifying the way we preserve 228 information. 229 230 We can’t hope to capture every single fragment of the internet, from the first 231 lagging days of DARPA to the videos attached to each TikTok sound, to preserve 232 the fire hose of content we are all wallowing in. But we can have a 233 conversation about which things we value and believe should be kept, which 234 things should be allowed to disappear into the waves, and who among us stands 235 to be remembered, echoing, like Sagan’s laughter, into the future. How 236 comfortable are we with the disappearance of entire swaths of careers and 237 artistic pursuits? And who is making these decisions — private equity or 238 journalists, AI or archivists, billionaires or workers? The answers to these 239 questions, and the way we define ourselves today, will shape our culture of the 240 future. 241 242 Most Popular 243 Most Popular 244 245 1. [42] 246 247 One dead, seven injured as Cybertruck explodes outside Trump’s hotel in Las 248 Vegas 249 250 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 251 2. [43] 252 253 Popeye and Tintin are now in the public domain 254 255 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 256 3. 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[46] 268 269 Nosferatu is the stuff of exquisitely erotic nightmares 270 271 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 272 273 Verge Deals 274 275 / Sign up for Verge Deals to get deals on products we've tested sent to your 276 inbox weekly. 277 278 Email (required)[47][ ]Sign up 279 By submitting your email, you agree to our [49]Terms and [50]Privacy Notice. 280 This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google [51]Privacy Policy and [52] 281 Terms of Service apply. 282 From our sponsor 283 284 [53] 285 286 [54] 287 Advertiser Content FromSponsor logo 288 Sponsor thumbnail 289 290 More from [55]Culture 291 292 • Smoking bullet casing with the word “Depose” written across it.Smoking 293 bullet casing with the word “Depose” written across it. 294 295 [56]The UnitedHealthcare shooter got exactly what he wanted 296 297 • Collage of podcasterCollage of podcaster 298 299 [57]Why every company wants a podcast now 300 301 • The Muppet Show’s First European TourThe Muppet Show’s First European Tour 302 303 [58]Muppet History was a bright spot online — now it’s embroiled in a 304 sexual harassment scandal 305 306 • Jake Paul and Mike Tyson fight during LIVE On Netflix: Jake Paul vs. Mike 307 Tyson at AT&T Stadium on November 15th, 2024, in Arlington, Texas.Jake 308 Paul and Mike Tyson fight during LIVE On Netflix: Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson 309 at AT&T Stadium on November 15th, 2024, in Arlington, Texas. 310 311 [59]Netflix’s Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson fight was a big moment for Bluesky 312 313 • 314 [60] 315 Advertiser Content FromSponsor logo 316 317 [61] 318 319 [62]The Verge logo. 320 321 • Cookie Settings 322 • [64]Terms of Use 323 • [65]Privacy Notice 324 • [66]Cookie Policy 325 • [67]Licensing FAQ 326 • [68]Accessibility 327 • [69]Platform Status 328 • [70]How We Rate and Review Products 329 330 • [71]Contact 331 • [72]Tip Us 332 • [73]Community Guidelines 333 • [74]About 334 • [75]Ethics Statement 335 336 The Verge is a vox media network 337 338 • [76]Advertise with us 339 • [77]Jobs @ Vox Media 340 341 © 2025 [78]Vox Media, LLC. 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