Latest / Mini Scroll / Link Rot, Digital Decay & The Internet Archive: Turns Out Digital Content Actually *Doesn't* Last Forever

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Link Rot, Digital Decay & The Internet Archive: Turns Out Digital Content Actually *Doesn't* Last Forever · Mini Scroll

• 0:00
  This episode of Infinite Scroll is brought to you by Britta from
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  In October last year, the Internet Archive, a project born
• 0:44
  in the late 1990s seeking to preserve the digital world,
• 0:47
  found itself under attack by hackers.
• 0:50
  The breach exposed data from 31 million users, shaking the
• 0:54
  website that held decades worth of preserved online content.
• 0:59
  The hackers left an ominous message on the homepage
• 1:02
  highlighting the archives small budget and the fragile state of
• 1:05
  its mission. Quote Have you ever felt like
• 1:08
  the Internet Archive runs on sticks and is constantly on the
• 1:11
  verge of suffering a catastrophic security breach?
• 1:15
  It just happened. Forced offline to prevent
• 1:17
  further damage, the Internet Archive team shut down the
• 1:20
  Wayback Machine, one of the most powerful tools when it comes to
• 1:24
  Internet history. The digital world waited as
• 1:27
  comparisons to the burning of the Library of Alexandria
• 1:30
  circulated a valid metaphor for what could have been a
• 1:33
  catastrophic loss of digital history.
• 1:36
  After going offline on October 8th, the Internet Archive
• 1:39
  resumed the Wayback Machine days later on October 13th, and
• 1:43
  eventually started allowing a read only view of the archived
• 1:46
  media. The event sparked widespread
• 1:48
  conversation about the fleeting nature of online content,
• 1:52
  despite the common belief that the Internet is forever and the
• 1:55
  indispensable role of digital archive tools.
• 1:58
  Operating on a modest 20 to $30 million annual budget, the
• 2:03
  Internet Archive punches well above its weight, preserving
• 2:06
  digital artifacts that serve as crucial resources for everything
• 2:10
  from court cases involving erased evidence to historical
• 2:14
  research. In an overwhelming digital
• 2:16
  landscape where content can disappear in an instant, the
• 2:20
  Archives mission to safeguard content is becoming more
• 2:23
  important every single day. From Centennial World, I'm
• 2:28
  Lauren Meisner and this this is infinite Scroll, a podcast about
• 2:32
  Internet culture, the creator economy and how social media is
• 2:35
  shaping Gen. Z Welcome back to Infinite
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  scroll, everyone. I'm so excited because this is
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  our first infinite scroll episode brought to you by our
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  support us in this kind of long term way and I'm so excited.
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  So please definitely give some love to Britta for helping us
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  keep the pod going. OK, As always, Please remember
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  to rate, review and subscribe. We're trying to get to 1000
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  Spotify ratings. We got to 500 at the end of last
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  year and that was really exciting for me.
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  So please hit that star rating. That's all you have to do on
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  can also leave us an Apple review as well or a YouTube
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  comment. Subscribe to YouTube, subscribe
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  to the pod, all that good stuff. Please also sign up to our
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  newsletter called Infinite Scroll.
• 3:31
  On Fridays, we round up the five biggest thing pieces on the
• 3:34
  Internet from that week and also follow me on Instagram at Lauren
• 3:37
  Meisner under Score. We've all grown up with the
• 3:45
  warning, be careful what you post online because your digital
• 3:49
  footprint lasts forever. But as we have discovered in
• 3:52
  recent years, not everything on the Internet is permanent.
• 3:55
  And while it may be a relief to know that those cringy posts
• 3:58
  from our past can vanish, the flip side is that important
• 4:02
  content can disappear too. With that being said, there have
• 4:05
  been substantial efforts to safeguard digital materials with
• 4:08
  the advent of the Internet Archive.
• 4:10
  If you spend a lot of time online researching, chances are
• 4:13
  you come across the Internet Archive.
• 4:15
  It's exactly what it sounds like, a tool that lets you view
• 4:18
  links and digital materials that have been deleted or altered,
• 4:22
  making them challenging to find otherwise.
• 4:24
  Since computer engineer Brewster Kale founded the nonprofit
• 4:27
  organization in 1996, the Internet Archive has been on a
• 4:31
  mission to provide quote, universal access to all
• 4:35
  knowledge, preserving the internet's history for future
• 4:38
  generations. To do this, the Internet Archive
• 4:41
  offers a range of programs and features.
• 4:43
  The most famous is probably the Wayback Machine, a tool that
• 4:46
  lets users enter a URL to explore and scroll through past
• 4:50
  versions of websites, whether they are still live or offline.
• 4:54
  Its interface is similar to that of platforms like Snap Tick,
• 4:57
  which lets users download TikTok videos after dropping in a link,
• 5:00
  or YouTube to MP3 converters that many of us relied on to
• 5:04
  turn videos into songs for streaming back in the day.
• 5:07
  The archiving process is partly crowd sourced, allowing anyone
• 5:10
  with an account to contribute by uploading files, or we're using
• 5:14
  the Wayback Machine browser extension to save pages as they
• 5:17
  use the Internet. Additionally, the Internet
• 5:19
  Archive offers Archive IT, a suite of services designed for
• 5:23
  institutions looking to collect, manage, preserve, and provide
• 5:26
  public access to web archival collections.
• 5:29
  As the Archive IT website puts it, Quote Archive IT is a
• 5:32
  service that allows institutions to preserve materials they have
• 5:36
  archived from the web. The service runs on Internet
• 5:38
  archives, nonprofit, self owned and operated data centers, and
• 5:42
  includes forever Storage of archived materials.
• 5:45
  Otherwise, the Internet Archive has historically relied on
• 5:48
  automated web crawlers, which are bots that browse the
• 5:51
  Internet to identify and store web pages and databases.
• 5:54
  These crawlers archive various web pages using different tools,
• 5:58
  including Heretics, developed by the Internet Archive and Alexa
• 6:01
  Internet, founded in April 1996. That being said, the Internet
• 6:06
  Archive conducted its first crawl in 1996.
• 6:09
  Now, crawls operate differently depending on the bot.
• 6:13
  According to the Payback Machines Frequently Asked
• 6:15
  Questions page, websites are often linked from other pages,
• 6:18
  so links from established sites are typically archived.
• 6:22
  Meanwhile, other crawls, like those conducted by Alexa
• 6:25
  Internet, follow their own unique processes.
• 6:28
  Through these efforts, the Internet Archive has made over
• 6:31
  28 years of web history accessible to the public.
• 6:35
  This includes a staggering collection 835 billion web
• 6:40
  pages, 44 million books and texts, 15,000,000 audio
• 6:45
  recordings including 255,000 live concerts, 10.6 million
• 6:51
  videos, including 2.6 million television news programs, 4.8
• 6:55
  million images, and 1,000,000 software programs.
• 6:59
  It's worth noting that the Internet Archive isn't the only
• 7:02
  archiving service. For example, the US Library of
• 7:05
  Congress preserves government websites and has archived every
• 7:09
  tweet sent from Twitter's founding until 2017.
• 7:12
  Similarly, the UK Web Archive focuses on websiteswith.uk
• 7:16
  domain names, but for this episode we have decided to focus
• 7:20
  on the Internet Archive given its massive efforts to save
• 7:23
  content online. Despite the Internet Archives
• 7:26
  comprehensive approach, not every website has been saved, an
• 7:29
  impossible task given just how huge the Internet is.
• 7:33
  But several factors have contributed to this.
• 7:35
  For example, automated crawlers may miss some sites during their
• 7:39
  crawls, especially if those sites are obscure or new.
• 7:42
  Additionally, some websites may be password protected or
• 7:45
  otherwise inaccessible to automated systems.
• 7:48
  In other cases, site owners may request that their content be
• 7:51
  excluded from the archive. According to data from the Pew
• 7:55
  Research Center quote, as of October 20, 2338, percent of web
• 7:59
  pages that existed in 2013 are no longer accessible.
• 8:03
  A decade later, where over 1/3 of these websites are out of
• 8:06
  action, there are even more websites with broken links,
• 8:09
  making it increasingly difficult for Internet users to gather
• 8:12
  specific information on certain topics.
• 8:15
  Quote 23% of news web pages contain at least one broken
• 8:19
  link, as do 21% of web pages from government sites.
• 8:23
  News sites with a high level of site traffic and those with less
• 8:27
  are about equally likely to contain broken links, the report
• 8:30
  continues. 54% of Wikipedia pages contain at least one link
• 8:35
  in their references section that points to a page that no longer
• 8:38
  exists. With this phenomenon
• 8:40
  characterized by experts as digital decay, it has become
• 8:44
  clear that not everything online lasts forever.
• 8:47
  This further proves the point of just how important it is to
• 8:50
  archive websites and digital material, particularly when it
• 8:53
  comes to preserving culturally and politically significant
• 8:56
  information. I'll get more into that
• 8:58
  importance later, but before that, a brief caveat is
• 9:01
  necessary. It's worth highlighting some of
• 9:03
  the challenges and threats the Internet Archive continues to
• 9:06
  face. A challenge that I touched on
• 9:08
  earlier is that many websites are deleted before crawlers can
• 9:12
  reach them or users can archive them.
• 9:14
  There's no simple solution to this, unless perhaps the
• 9:17
  Internet Archive partners with more hosting services or search
• 9:20
  engines to consistently archive sites and make them publicly
• 9:23
  accessible, or if these services took on the task of archiving
• 9:27
  themselves. Even with such partnerships,
• 9:29
  certain obstacles still prevent some websites from being
• 9:32
  archived. Aside from issues around scope,
• 9:35
  journalist Chris Stokel Walker, in a piece for the BBC,
• 9:38
  characterizes the problems as far reaching, noting that they
• 9:41
  range from, quote, financial threats, technical challenges,
• 9:45
  cyber attacks, and legal battles from businesses who dislike the
• 9:49
  idea of freely available copies of their intellectual property.
• 9:53
  For instance, much of the financial burden on the Internet
• 9:56
  Archive stems from its status as a nonprofit organization, funded
• 10:00
  primarily by donations from foundations such as the National
• 10:04
  Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation,
• 10:07
  and the Democracy Fund. As our reliance on Internet
• 10:10
  archives grow and the projects expand, so do the raising
• 10:14
  questions about the long term stability of the archive.
• 10:18
  These financial challenges, of course, make legal battles more
• 10:21
  difficult for the Internet Archive.
• 10:23
  In recent years, the organization has faced legal
• 10:26
  issues around intellectual property and copyright.
• 10:29
  Stokel Walker detailed these challenges in his article,
• 10:31
  highlighting that the Internet Archive was sued by four major
• 10:35
  book publishers who argued that scanning physical books for
• 10:38
  digital access violated copyright law in the United
• 10:41
  States. A court subsequently ruled that
• 10:44
  this practice was illegal, where the Internet Archives appeal
• 10:47
  against that decision was later rejected.
• 10:49
  Following its legal troubles, the Internet Archive faced a
• 10:52
  slew of cyber safety issues, most notably a hack in October
• 10:56
  last year, as I mentioned in the intro.
• 10:58
  Aside from this, in May 2024, the Internet Archive also
• 11:02
  experienced a distributed denial of service attack, a common type
• 11:06
  of cyber attack where a site is overwhelmed with fake traffic.
• 11:09
  The website experienced outages as a result, marking the first
• 11:13
  time it have been targeted in its history, according to the
• 11:16
  organization's founder, Brewster Kale.
• 11:18
  That being said, we are still clearly learning how to best
• 11:22
  archive digital content, but significant progress has been
• 11:25
  made. For example, Wikipedia has begun
• 11:28
  citing archived links to make it easier for users to access the
• 11:31
  information they are looking for.
• 11:33
  In 2018, it was reported that the Internet Archive restored
• 11:37
  over 9 million links across Wikipedia by leveraging the
• 11:40
  Wayback Machine, ensuring that information remains accessible
• 11:44
  even when original sources disappear or links change.
• 11:47
  Internet Archive also made various books accessible
• 11:51
  LinkedIn Wikipedia entries. Many of these articles rely on
• 11:54
  information from books that make it difficult for readers online
• 11:57
  to track down a copy, especially if they do not belong to any
• 12:00
  sort of institution that would grant them access.
• 12:03
  As reported by Clint Finley for Wired in 2019.
• 12:06
  Quote Thanks to an initiative by the Internet Archive, you can
• 12:09
  click the name of the book and see a two page preview of the
• 12:12
  cited work, as as long as the citation specifies a page
• 12:15
  number. More recently, in September last
• 12:18
  year, the Internet Archive struck a partnership with
• 12:20
  Google, which will allow for archived websites and pages to
• 12:23
  show up in search results. Given that not every Internet
• 12:27
  user is familiar with the Internet Archive or the Wayback
• 12:30
  Machine, this will likely help the nonprofit with its mission
• 12:33
  to ensure equal access to all Internet users.
• 12:36
  Quote To access this new feature, conduct a search on
• 12:39
  Google as usual. Next to each search result,
• 12:42
  you'll find 3 dots. Clicking on these will bring up
• 12:44
  the About This Result panel. Within this panel, select More
• 12:48
  About This page to reveal a link to the Wayback Machine page for
• 12:52
  that website. Another blog post from the
• 12:54
  Internet Archive explains. Now, considering all the
• 12:58
  challenges the Internet Archive continues to face, a question
• 13:01
  arises, is saving all this media really worth it?
• 13:05
  And the answer is a resounding yes.
• 13:08
  The Internet has become the foremost communication tool of
• 13:11
  our time, capturing the essence of human interaction, thought
• 13:15
  processes, and discussion. Tools like the Internet Archive
• 13:18
  play a crucial role in preserving this digital
• 13:20
  dialogue, particularly when it comes to archiving content from
• 13:24
  public pages and social media accounts.
• 13:26
  Given the fast-paced trend cycle and the ever changing cultural
• 13:29
  zeitgeist, the future of many social media platforms remains
• 13:33
  precarious. TikTok being a prime example
• 13:36
  with the ban in the United States With TikTok being a major
• 13:39
  culture driver and even a political hub for years, losing
• 13:43
  access to hundreds of thousands of videos would be an extreme
• 13:46
  loss for digital archivists in years to come.
• 13:49
  And we have seen instances where content from social media
• 13:52
  platforms has vanished entirely from the Internet.
• 13:55
  A prime example is Myspace, which lost all content uploaded
• 13:59
  before 2016, covering its peak years through the 2000s and
• 14:03
  early 20 tens. If you're interested in a full
• 14:06
  discussion of Myspace's rise and fall, we did a deep dive on this
• 14:10
  last year, so feel free to check it out.
• 14:12
  But regarding the loss of user data, Myspace cited a faulty
• 14:15
  server migration around 2018, leading to the disappearance of
• 14:19
  over 50 million tracks from 14,000,000 musicians, along with
• 14:23
  millions of user profiles and photos.
• 14:25
  Quote Even though many users had deserted Myspace by the end of
• 14:29
  the naughties, for newer social networks such as Facebook, the
• 14:31
  site retained a significant user base well into this decade as
• 14:35
  musicians had cultivated their fan followings on it.
• 14:38
  Alex Hearn reported for The Guardian in 2019.
• 14:41
  The company has confirmed to Online Archivis that music has
• 14:45
  been lost permanently, dashing hopes that a backup could be
• 14:48
  used to permanently protect the collection for future
• 14:51
  generations. While Myspace is probably the
• 14:54
  most prolific example of mass amounts of social media data
• 14:57
  disappearing, a similar thing happened with Vine.
• 15:00
  Although with Vine, it wasn't an accident, it happened because
• 15:03
  the app closed after Vine was officially discontinued in
• 15:07
  January 2017. It was only a matter of time
• 15:10
  before all the six second videos would be difficult to access.
• 15:14
  Upon the platform's closure, Twitter, which had acquired the
• 15:17
  platform in 2012, revamped the Vine website, allowing it to act
• 15:21
  as an archive for content quote. On the new site, which is
• 15:25
  described as a time capsule for all things Vine, you can search
• 15:28
  for a specific user's profile or browse the archives by category
• 15:32
  or year. Twitter has curated a number of
• 15:35
  highlights in some of its most popular categories, like
• 15:38
  animals, art, comedy, music, and weird.
• 15:40
  Carissa Bell reported for Mashable upon Vine's.
• 15:44
  There are also a number of editors, pics, and playlists
• 15:47
  where you can relive some of the site's most memorable memes and
• 15:50
  popular videos. While many Vine users
• 15:52
  appreciated the sentiment, the archive is no longer available
• 15:56
  via the Vine website, showing just how important external
• 15:59
  sources like the Internet Archive are when documenting
• 16:03
  Internet history. As digital culture becomes
• 16:06
  increasingly disjointed, archiving its content is
• 16:09
  becoming crucial. On this podcast, we've often
• 16:12
  discussed the death of monoculture.
• 16:14
  For those unfamiliar with the term, Kyle Chacchia writes for
• 16:17
  Vox that quote. Today, the word monoculture is
• 16:20
  used to describe a monolithic culture, the range of artifacts,
• 16:23
  characters, voices, and stories that a specific demographic,
• 16:27
  Americans for example, find recognizable and relatable.
• 16:30
  Pop culture was once a monoculture dictated by top 50
• 16:34
  charts, award shows, TV guides, and magazines.
• 16:37
  Everyone experienced a similar cultural zeitgeist.
• 16:40
  The early days of the Internet mirrored this with shared viral
• 16:43
  moments like Friday by Rebecca Plaque.
• 16:46
  While there are still universal reference points today, such as
• 16:49
  Wicked, it's increasingly difficult to find someone who
• 16:52
  shares the exact same Internet experience.
• 16:55
  This shift is due to the Internet becoming highly
• 16:57
  personalized, with algorithms curating content based on
• 17:01
  individual interests. And as monoculture fades, the
• 17:04
  importance of archiving the Internet grows.
• 17:07
  Even in the present, understanding the broader
• 17:09
  digital landscape is challenging, especially when
• 17:12
  drama or events are happening outside our usual bubble of
• 17:15
  content. Preserving these moments is
• 17:17
  essential for future digital culture enthusiasts and
• 17:20
  historians to grasp the full context of trends and viral
• 17:24
  phenomena. Just imagine trying to explain
• 17:27
  why a Bach look alike contest was happening in New York City
• 17:30
  without the context. But the importance of saving
• 17:33
  content online is not exclusive to preserving information for
• 17:37
  historians or digital archivists for the future.
• 17:40
  It is also a major part of fact checking and ensuring trans and
• 17:44
  media. Over the past few years,
• 17:46
  misinformation and disinformation have become
• 17:49
  increasingly pervasive online. Journalists and social media
• 17:52
  commentators have extensively covered this issue, with many
• 17:55
  suggesting that Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter was the
• 17:58
  final nail in the coffin of misinformation.
• 18:00
  By enabling anyone to purchase verification and allowing bots
• 18:04
  to flood timelines, these changes have amplified the
• 18:07
  spread of false information. While community notes offer a
• 18:10
  small buffer by flagging inaccuracies, their impact is
• 18:14
  limited. They address surface level
• 18:16
  issues but fall short in addressing the core problem, the
• 18:19
  need for effective moderation, and the removal of
• 18:22
  misinformation and disinformation from a platform.
• 18:25
  Now, other big tech entities are following suit, with Meta being
• 18:29
  a case in point. Earlier this month, Mark
• 18:32
  Zuckerberg announced significant changes to Meta's moderation
• 18:35
  policies, explaining the reasoning behind these
• 18:37
  adjustments. Zuckerberg expressed frustration
• 18:40
  with the current state of moderation across the platform,
• 18:43
  suggesting saying that it has been taken too far.
• 18:45
  The problem with complex systems is they make mistakes.
• 18:49
  Even if they accidentally censor just 1% of posts, that's
• 18:52
  millions of people and we've reached a point where it's just
• 18:55
  too many mistakes and too much censorship.
• 18:58
  In an attempt to protect free expression and limit censorship,
• 19:03
  Zuckerberg announced several moderation changes, with some of
• 19:07
  the most controversial being Meta's plan to replace fact
• 19:10
  checkers with community notes in the US, following a model
• 19:14
  similar to X. Meanwhile, another significant
• 19:17
  change was Meta's decision to relocate its trust and safety
• 19:21
  and content moderation teams from California to Texas, citing
• 19:24
  concerns that biased employees may be excessively censoring
• 19:28
  content. With moderation seemingly
• 19:31
  falling by the wayside, allowing for misinformation to surge,
• 19:35
  archiving digital content becomes increasingly important.
• 19:38
  By preserving past websites and content, users can verify what
• 19:42
  was said and when. For instance, academics and
• 19:45
  archivists Kayla Harris, Christina Bass, and Stephanie
• 19:48
  Schreffler, in a piece for The Conversation, highlight an
• 19:51
  instance where the Internet Archives Wayback Machine was
• 19:54
  used to Fact Check information. They cite a case during
• 19:58
  President Donald Trump's first term when he claimed that Google
• 20:01
  had promoted former President Barack Obama's State of the
• 20:05
  Union address, a speech that the US president gives to a joint
• 20:08
  session of Congress every year over his own.
• 20:11
  The Wayback Machine was instrumental in verifying the
• 20:14
  accuracy of such claims. Quote Archived versions of the
• 20:17
  Google homepage proved that Google had in fact highlighted
• 20:21
  Trump's State of the Union address in the same manner.
• 20:24
  The author's. Explain Multiple news outlets
• 20:26
  use the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine as the source
• 20:29
  for fact checking these types of claims, since screenshots alone
• 20:32
  can be easily altered. While publications may use
• 20:35
  archive digital materials to Fact Check claims, these same
• 20:38
  tools also serve as a check on media.
• 20:41
  A diverse and honest media landscape is increasingly
• 20:44
  important, especially as social media platforms, where many of
• 20:47
  us continue to get our news, move away from fact checking and
• 20:51
  moderation. However, consumer trust in media
• 20:54
  outlets is at an all time low. According to the Gallup, in
• 20:57
  2020, 469% of Americans report having quote none at all or not
• 21:03
  very much. Trust and confidence in mass
• 21:06
  media to report the news accurately and fairly, compared
• 21:09
  to only 31% who held a great deal of trust.
• 21:13
  In Australia, it's a similar story.
• 21:16
  Distrust in the news has reached its highest point since 2016,
• 21:19
  with the University of Canberra's 2024 Digital News
• 21:23
  Report noting that 30, 33% of the population express distrust
• 21:27
  in media. Whether this distrust is
• 21:29
  justified or not is another conversation, but services like
• 21:33
  the Internet Archive offer the public a valuable tool to
• 21:36
  scrutinize information, fostering a greater transparency
• 21:40
  and potentially rebuilding trust in the media.
• 21:43
  By providing access to past content, these archives allow
• 21:46
  users to verify claims, track changes, and hold media outlets
• 21:50
  accountable, contributing to a more informed audience.
• 21:53
  In their piece for The Conversation, Harris, Bass, and
• 21:56
  Schreffler highlighted another example, focusing on how
• 22:00
  archival tools have ensured transparency from Gawker.
• 22:03
  Founded in 2002 by Nick Denton, Gawker quickly became one of the
• 22:07
  most popular gossip blogs on the Internet.
• 22:10
  Despite its success, Gawker Media was often embroiled in
• 22:13
  controversy, ultimately leading to its closure and eventual
• 22:17
  bankruptcy. Quote When a news story
• 22:19
  disappeared from the Gawker website a year after the
• 22:21
  publication shut down, the Freedom of the Press Foundation
• 22:24
  became concerned with what might happen when wealthy individuals
• 22:28
  purchase websites with the intent to delete or censor the
• 22:32
  archives, the authors continue. It partnered with the Internet
• 22:35
  Archive to launch a web archive collection focused on preserving
• 22:39
  web archives of vulnerable news outlets and to dissuade
• 22:42
  billionaires from purchasing such material to censor.
• 22:45
  With that being said, these tools aren't just a check on
• 22:48
  media, but also on those who run it, helping to limit any harmful
• 22:52
  agendas that may be at play. By preserving content and
• 22:55
  providing access to past publications, digital archiving
• 22:59
  services ensure that media outlets and their operators are
• 23:02
  held accountable and transparent.
• 23:04
  All that to say, it's clear that archiving digital content is
• 23:07
  important, but we cannot overlook the challenges posed by
• 23:11
  our current landscape and what these mean for the archiving
• 23:14
  process. Of course, this comes back to
• 23:17
  misinformation, as it so often does.
• 23:20
  Operating in a digital landscape where misinformation runs
• 23:23
  rampant raises a key question. How do we preserve information
• 23:27
  when distinguishing between real and fake becomes increasingly
• 23:31
  difficult? And is it even worth it?
• 23:33
  While we may struggle to differentiate between what is
• 23:36
  real and the fake in the moment, hindsight often brings clarity.
• 23:40
  As time passes, we gain greater insights into the forces at play
• 23:44
  during specific incidents or cultural moments.
• 23:46
  Online archiving digital content therefore serves a dual purpose.
• 23:51
  It not only preserves the historical digital record but
• 23:54
  also provides a means to trace how information spreads and
• 23:58
  evolves over time. This can educate Internet users
• 24:01
  around misinformation and promote digital literacy.
• 24:05
  Ultimately, it's important to approach archived sources with a
• 24:08
  critical eye. While they are valuable tools
• 24:11
  for preserving digital history, in today's digital landscape, no
• 24:15
  one can really afford to accept information at face value.
• 24:18
  The message here is clear. Archives can help maintain the
• 24:22
  integrity of information dissemination in a world where
• 24:26
  the truth can often be elusive. But despite their importance,
• 24:30
  archived content, like all online information, requires
• 24:33
  critical thinking to be used effectively.
• 24:36
  Infamous Scroll is a podcast produced, presented and Co
• 24:40
  written by me, Lauren Meissner for Centennial World.
• 24:43
  This episode was researched and Co written by Annabelle Ben
• 24:46
  David. Editing is by Danny Fennick.
• 24:48
  Thank you so much for listening. I love you guys and I will talk
• 24:51
  to you next week. Bye.