dce/davideisinger.com
1
0
Fork 0
Code Issues Pull Requests Actions Packages Projects Releases Wiki Activity

Add links

Browse Source
This commit is contained in:
David Eisinger
2025-01-01 23:49:19 -05:00
parent 29cbcad6b4
commit 6f7b53c5d3
9 changed files with 2992 additions and 6 deletions
Download Patch File Download Diff File Expand all files Collapse all files

413
static/archive/www-theverge-com-pag815.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,413 @@
[1]Skip to main content
[2]The Verge logo.[3]The Verge homepage
• [4]The Verge homepageThe Verge logo./
• [5]Tech/
• [6]Reviews/
• [7]Science/
• [8]Entertainment/
• [9]AI/
• MoreMenu
[11]The Verge logo.
Menu
• [13]Internet Culture
How to disappear completely
The internet is forever. But also, it isn’t. What happens to our culture when
websites start to vanish at random?
By [14]s.e. smith
Dec 18, 2024, 1:00 PM UTC
Share this story
•
•
•
[How_to_dis]
Michelle Rohn / The Verge
Every few days, I open my inbox to an email from someone asking after an old
article of mine that they can’t find. They’re graduate students, activists,
teachers setting up their syllabus, researchers, fellow journalists, or simply
people with a frequently revisited bookmark, not understanding why a link
suddenly goes nowhere. They’re people who searched the internet and found
references, but not the article itself, and are trying to track an idea down to
its source. They’re readers trying to understand the throughlines of society
and culture, ranging from peak feminist blogging of the 2010s to shifts in
cultural attitudes about disability, but coming up empty.
This is not a problem unique to me: a recent Pew Research Center study on
digital decay found that [19]38 percent of webpages accessible in 2013 are not
accessible today. This happens because pages are taken down, URLs are changed,
and entire websites vanish, as in the case of [20]dozens of scientific journals
and all the critical research they contained. This is especially acute for
news: researchers at Northwestern University estimate we will lose [21]
one-third of local news sites by 2025, and the digital-first properties that
have risen and fallen are nearly impossible to count. The internet has become a
series of lacunas, spaces where content used to be. Sometimes it is me
searching for that content, spending an hour reverse engineering something in
the Wayback Machine because I want to cite it, or read the whole article, not
just a quote in another publication, an echo of an echo. It’s reached the point
where I upload PDFs of my clips to [22]my personal website in addition to
linking to them to ensure they’ll remain accessible (until I stop paying my
hosting fees, at least), thinking bitterly of the volume of work I’ve lost to
shuttered websites, restructured links, hacks that were never repaired, servers
disrupted, sometimes accompanied by false promises that an archive would be
restored and maintained.
Who am I, if not my content?
When you describe yourself as a “writer” but your writing has become hard to
find, it creates a crisis not just of profession, but identity. Who am I, if
not my content? It is hard not to feel the disappearance of creative work as a
different kind of death of the author, one in which readers can’t interpret my
work because they can’t find it. It is a sort of fading away, of losing shape
and relevance.
We live in a content era, the creator economy, in which everyone and their
grandparent has turned into a “content creator.” We are watching the internet
slip away as websites and apps rise and fall, swallowed by private equity,
shuttered by burnout, or simply frozen in time — taking with it our memories,
our cultural phenomena, our memes. In theory, as we like to tell Zoomers who
are putting it all out there, “the internet is forever.” Employers and enemies
can and will ferret out your worst moments on the internet, and even things
that were, in theory, deleted can be resurfaced on mirrored sites and archives,
with screenshots of half-forgotten forums. And yet, in reality, things can
disappear as though they never were, sometimes quite suddenly. The same
accessibility and low barriers to entry, that same easy come — I can set up a
website in the time it takes me to finish this sentence — can also morph into
an easy go. A social media account can be locked or banned for a real or
perceived terms of service violation in the blink of an eye, a venerable
feminist publication can [23]abruptly vanish, a news startup can [24]wink out
of existence just as quickly as it rose to prominence, and news organizations
can nuke [25]decades of music journalism or [26]TV archives at the flick of a
switch. Restructured links and a [27]fundamentally broken search infrastructure
can shift an article out of view to all but the most determined. I wonder, for
example, how long my [28]National Magazine Award-winning column at Catapult
will remain accessible online, living as it does [29]at the whims of its owner,
an eccentric billionaire.
The loss of content is not a new phenomenon. It’s endemic to human societies,
marked as we are by an ephemerality that can be hard to contextualize from a
distance. For every Shakespeare, hundreds of other playwrights lived, wrote,
and died, and we remember neither their names nor their words. (There is also,
of course, a Marlowe, for the girlies who know.) For every Dickens, uncountable
penny dreadfuls on cheap newsprint didn’t withstand the test of decades. For
every iconic cuneiform tablet bemoaning poor customer service, countless more
have been destroyed over the millennia. 
Two hands holding two postcards, the front of which shows a goblin at an
old-fashioned computer and reads: Content Goblins.Two hands holding two
postcards, the front of which shows a goblin at an old-fashioned computer and
reads: Content Goblins.
Two hands holding two postcards, the front of which shows a goblin at an
old-fashioned computer and reads: Content Goblins.Two hands holding two
postcards, the front of which shows a goblin at an old-fashioned computer and
reads: Content Goblins.
This story is featured in [30]Content Goblins, a limited-run print magazine
about “content” and the people who “make” it. Get your copy of this gorgeous /
deranged publication by [31]signing up for an annual subscription to The Verge,
while supplies last.
This is a particularly complex problem for digital storage. For every
painstakingly archived digital item, there are also hard drives corrupted,
content wiped, media formats that are effectively unreadable and unusable, as I
discovered recently when I went on a hunt for a reel-to-reel machine to recover
some audio from the 1960s. Every digital media format, from the Bernoulli Box
to the racks of servers [32]slowly boiling the planet, is ultimately doomed to
obsolescence as it’s supplanted by the next innovation, with [33]even the
Library of Congress struggling to preserve digital archives.  
Historical content can be an incredibly informative resource, telling us how
people lived and thought. But we must remember that it’s a small fraction of
contemporaneous material that survives, even as we hope, of course, that it’s
our own existence that is ultimately memorialized. Sometimes it is through the
gaps that we read history or are forced to consider why some things are more
likely to persist than others, are more remembered than others, why other
histories are subject to active suppression, as we’re seeing across the United
States with legislation targeting the accurate teaching of history.
So why does the present situation feel so severe? The shortest and most obvious
answer is that things feel more real when we are living through them and they
affect us directly; what we understand intellectually about history hits
different when we’re living it, especially for the “Extremely Online” among us
who are constantly saturated in a steady supply of mourning over the death of
the internet and “you might be a millennial if [you recognize a floppy disc /
landline phone / LAN party]” memes. 
The longer answer speaks to the arc of historical trends that are fundamentally
reshaping humanity, with the boom in artificial intelligence standing out as a
particularly brutal contributor to our present state. While many have been
enjoying a little AI, as a treat, dabbling in ChatGPT to help draft an angry
letter to the utility company, or goofing around with increasingly unhinged
Midjourney prompts, we are unwittingly contributing to the engine of our own
despair. 
There’s a phenomenon that happens where I live along the rugged coastline of
Northern California, when conditions are right, or more accurately, wrong: a
layer of green, foamy scum clings to the surface of the ocean so that when the
waves wash your footprints away, they are replaced by a layer of vile, reeking
slime dotted by writhing marine organisms. This is, at times, how the internet
feels right now. We are being slowly erased, but instead of passing peacefully
into the vale with the ebb and flow of soothing waves, we are being actively
replaced by garbage. 
How comfortable are we with the disappearance of entire swaths of careers and
artistic pursuits?
Garbage created by an industry broadly referring to itself as “artificial
intelligence” — a term so overused that it is starting to lose all meaning —
devouring and then regurgitating our content, a froth of green, smelly foulness
that rests on the sands where people once walked. I am starting to disassociate
every time I get a new notification about terms of service in which I learn
that my content will be used to train yet another large language model designed
to replace me, as corporations attempt to replace creativity and joy with a
mountain of trash. I attempt to negotiate for protective clauses in contracts
and am rejected, lie awake at night wondering how much of my work has already
been folded into systems generating billions in profits for their makers on the
backs of our labor, sigh every time I log in to LinkedIn and all the writing
jobs are actually advertisements for training the latest AI hotness. 
The comparison with our green tides runs deeper than that, as AI is literally
[34]burning up the world in the name of profits, driving the climate change
that [35]causes toxic algae blooms. Much like the British tossing papyrus and
mummies into the hungry maws of steam engines, we are destroying history and
culture to fuel the empire, and the empire is profit. The result is [36]
internet poisoning, a landscape saturated in misinformation and AI garbage — at
best [37]comical, at worst, [38]lethal. For future generations interested in
knowing more about the world we live in, it has the potential to make it nearly
impossible to untangle fact from fiction, art from fakery. There is something
deeply offensive in knowing not only that hundreds of thousands of my words
have vanished, but that some LLM is probably crawling through the tattered
fragments to churn out mockeries of the very real sources, research, and energy
that once backed those words. They’ll be vomited back on the shores of my
browser, squirming and stinking. 
There is also a strange and bitter loss of autonomy in watching humans slowly
disappear beyond a veil of AI murk and inherently unstable digital storage, a
dark twist at a moment when so many of us are fighting for our right to exist
in our own bodies. We have come to accept, without reading, the terms of
service that assign the rights of our content to the platforms we post on, and
when those platforms abruptly close or [39]delete our content or lock us out of
our accounts, we mourn the loss as we receive a firsthand lesson in what it
means to sign our digital rights away. When I choose to delete my tweets, take
my self-hosted blog off the internet, or set up a finsta, I’m in control of my
data destiny, but the loss of control when archives are maintained by the
winners serves to make me feel small, forgotten, easily disposed of.
The notion that everything that ever has been and ever will be on the internet
will always be there — potentially to haunt us — feels less true in an era when
data is constantly disappearing. The internet is not, in fact, forever;
sometimes the zombie of a bad take will linger, sure, but just as probably,
we’ll vanish, as I recently discovered when I realized that one of my Twitter
accounts, active from 2009–2023, had been wiped because I hadn’t logged in
recently. An untold number of bon mots, educational threads, exchanges with
fellow users, photographs, and of course, misinformed, shitty opinions I’d
rather forget, simply gone, into the ether. It felt, perhaps irrationally, like
being erased, like that person had never been. 
I think sometimes of the [40]Voyager Golden Records, spinning endlessly into
eternity, a cry into the void that features a selection of carefully curated
human experiences in an attempt to communicate the vastness of Earth’s history
and culture to other beings. The offerings, selected by a committee led by Carl
Sagan, include a photograph of a woman in a grocery store, the sound of
footsteps, a sampling from The Magic Flute, an image of an astronaut in space,
a human heartbeat. The process of picking and choosing what to include must
have been agonizing and fraught, limited not just by storage considerations,
but politics, pressure, and cultural hegemony. The result is a highly
fragmented, erratic, selective view of what it means to be human, more a
testimony of our limitations than of our potential, a reminder that archival
work is not neutral, and a powerful case for diversifying the way we preserve
information. 
We can’t hope to capture every single fragment of the internet, from the first
lagging days of DARPA to the videos attached to each TikTok sound, to preserve
the fire hose of content we are all wallowing in. But we can have a
conversation about which things we value and believe should be kept, which
things should be allowed to disappear into the waves, and who among us stands
to be remembered, echoing, like Sagan’s laughter, into the future. How
comfortable are we with the disappearance of entire swaths of careers and
artistic pursuits? And who is making these decisions — private equity or
journalists, AI or archivists, billionaires or workers? The answers to these
questions, and the way we define ourselves today, will shape our culture of the
future.
Most Popular
Most Popular
1. [42]
One dead, seven injured as Cybertruck explodes outside Trump’s hotel in Las
Vegas
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
2. [43]
Popeye and Tintin are now in the public domain
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
3. [44]
The Steam Deck has finally been surpassed — by a fork of Valve’s own
experience
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
4. [45]
Is Sleep’s Dopesmoker still the heaviest album of all time?
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
5. [46]
Nosferatu is the stuff of exquisitely erotic nightmares
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Verge Deals
/ Sign up for Verge Deals to get deals on products we've tested sent to your
inbox weekly.
Email (required)[47][ ]Sign up
By submitting your email, you agree to our [49]Terms and [50]Privacy Notice.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google [51]Privacy Policy and [52]
Terms of Service apply.
From our sponsor
[53]
[54]
Advertiser Content FromSponsor logo
Sponsor thumbnail
More from [55]Culture
• Smoking bullet casing with the word “Depose” written across it.Smoking
bullet casing with the word “Depose” written across it.
[56]The UnitedHealthcare shooter got exactly what he wanted
• Collage of podcasterCollage of podcaster
[57]Why every company wants a podcast now
• The Muppet Show’s First European TourThe Muppet Show’s First European Tour
[58]Muppet History was a bright spot online — now it’s embroiled in a
sexual harassment scandal
• Jake Paul and Mike Tyson fight during LIVE On Netflix: Jake Paul vs. Mike
Tyson at AT&T Stadium on November 15th, 2024, in Arlington, Texas.Jake
Paul and Mike Tyson fight during LIVE On Netflix: Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson
at AT&T Stadium on November 15th, 2024, in Arlington, Texas.
[59]Netflix’s Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson fight was a big moment for Bluesky
•
[60]
Advertiser Content FromSponsor logo
[61]
[62]The Verge logo.
• Cookie Settings
• [64]Terms of Use
• [65]Privacy Notice
• [66]Cookie Policy
• [67]Licensing FAQ
• [68]Accessibility
• [69]Platform Status
• [70]How We Rate and Review Products
• [71]Contact
• [72]Tip Us
• [73]Community Guidelines
• [74]About
• [75]Ethics Statement
The Verge is a vox media network
• [76]Advertise with us
• [77]Jobs @ Vox Media
© 2025 [78]Vox Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved
References:
[1] https://www.theverge.com/24321569/internet-decay-link-rot-web-archive-deleted-culture#content
[2] https://www.theverge.com/
[3] https://www.theverge.com/
[4] https://www.theverge.com/
[5] https://www.theverge.com/tech
[6] https://www.theverge.com/reviews
[7] https://www.theverge.com/science
[8] https://www.theverge.com/entertainment
[9] https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence
[11] https://www.theverge.com/
[13] https://www.theverge.com/internet-culture
[14] https://www.theverge.com/authors/s-e-smith
[19] https://www.pewresearch.org/data-labs/2024/05/17/when-online-content-disappears/
[20] https://www.science.org/content/article/dozens-scientific-journals-have-vanished-internet-and-no-one-preserved-them
[21] https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2022/06/newspapers-close-decline-in-local-journalism/
[22] https://www.realsesmith.com/clips
[23] https://www.opb.org/article/2022/04/17/portland-based-bitch-media-closing-doors-june-2022/
[24] https://variety.com/2024/digital/news/the-messenger-shutting-down-effective-immediately-1235893470/
[25] https://variety.com/2024/digital/news/mtv-news-website-archives-pulled-offline-1236047163/
[26] https://latenighter.com/news/paramount-axes-comedy-central-website-show-clips-library/
[27] https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/
[28] https://magazine.catapult.co/column/stories/the-beauty-of-spaces-created-for-and-by-disabled-people
[29] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/23/business/elizabeth-koch-perception-box.html
[30] https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/3/24307540/verge-print-magazine-seo-content-goblins
[31] https://www.theverge.com/subscribe
[32] https://www.hcn.org/articles/do-data-centers-mean-doomsville-for-renewable-energy/
[33] https://www.loc.gov/preservation/scientists/projects/cd_longevity.html
[34] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00843-2
[35] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2017.21884
[36] https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/20/1065667/how-ai-generated-text-is-poisoning-the-internet/
[37] https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/24/24164176/theyre-eating-the-damn-glue-pizza
[38] https://gizmodo.com/ai-mushroom-id-dangerous-consumer-advocates-warn-1851355484
[39] https://slate.com/technology/2022/10/instagram-account-deleted-no-warning-digital-rights.html
[40] https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager/voyager-golden-record-overview/
[42] https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/1/24333612/cybertruck-fire-explosion-trump-hotel-las-vegas
[43] https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/1/24330191/popeye-tintin-head-2025-public-domain
[44] https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/30/24329005/bazzite-asus-rog-ally-x-steam-os-editorial
[45] https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/1/24333190/heavier-than-dopesmoker
[46] https://www.theverge.com/24322968/nosferatu-review-robert-eggers
[49] https://www.voxmedia.com/legal/terms-of-use
[50] https://www.voxmedia.com/legal/privacy-notice
[51] https://policies.google.com/privacy
[52] https://policies.google.com/terms
[53] http://theverge.com/
[54] http://theverge.com/
[55] https://www.theverge.com/culture
[56] https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/13/24319728/unitedhealthcare-luigi-mangione-brian-thompson-reaction
[57] https://www.theverge.com/24318644/podcast-election-vc-marketing-business-decoder-interview
[58] https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/6/24312382/muppet-history-fandom-sexual-harassment-dms
[59] https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/18/24299530/netflix-jake-paul-mike-tyson-fight-bluesky
[60] http://theverge.com/
[61] http://theverge.com/
[62] https://www.theverge.com/
[64] https://www.voxmedia.com/legal/terms-of-use
[65] https://www.voxmedia.com/legal/privacy-notice
[66] https://www.voxmedia.com/legal/cookie-policy
[67] https://www.voxmedia.com/pages/licensing
[68] https://www.voxmedia.com/legal/accessibility
[69] https://status.voxmedia.com/
[70] https://www.theverge.com/pages/how-we-rate
[71] https://www.theverge.com/contact-the-verge
[72] https://www.theverge.com/c/tech/22579076/how-to-tip-the-verge-email-signal-and-more
[73] https://www.theverge.com/community-guidelines
[74] https://www.theverge.com/about-the-verge
[75] https://www.theverge.com/ethics-statement
[76] https://www.voxmedia.com/vox-advertising
[77] https://jobs.voxmedia.com/
[78] https://www.voxmedia.com/