The Internet Isn’t Forever: Who Decides What Gets Erased?
What if your most insightful work disappeared overnight? The internet, often hailed as humanity’s eternal archive, is quietly erasing our history, one webpage at a time.
With 38% of 2013’s webpages now inaccessible, the internet’s promise of permanence is unraveling. Digital decay is erasing everything from groundbreaking journalism to obscure cultural artifacts, leaving creators, researchers, and historians stranded.
AI compounds the issue, recycling fragments of lost content into misinformation and triviality. Meanwhile, corporate takeovers and neglected archives hasten the vanishing act.
As ephemeral as it is vast, the internet faces existential questions about what should be preserved, who decides, and whose stories endure.
- 38% of pages since 2013 gone
- Local news outlets to drop by 2025
- AI exploits and distorts disappearing archives
Should content preservation be a public responsibility, or is it a luxury in a profit-driven internet? Share your thoughts below, before this, too, disappears.
Read the full article on The Verge.
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