The Internet is Rotting!

Why the Cyberattack on Archive.org Isn't Making Headlines: An Overlooked Final Digital Assault on Free Speech

This might just be the coup de grâce in the battle against free speech: the systematic erasure of the Internet's history, where alterations to websites vanish without a trace. If Archive.org, the steward of digital memory, succumbs to this darkness, we're witnessing not just an act of censorship but the onset of digital Alzheimer’s. This is a move towards technocracy's dream where history is not only written by the victors but is controlled, edited, and deleted at will.

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Censorship isn't a specter anymore; it's the main event. Legal battles rage, public outcry intensifies, yet social media giants ramp up their suppression with a ferocity that would make Orwell blush.

Podcasters now debate not ideas, but the very survival of their content. Alternative creators have abandoned YouTube for Rumble—not out of choice, but out of necessity. They sacrifice their vast audiences on the altar of visibility, because what's the point of having a voice if it's silenced or shadowbanned into oblivion?

And it's not just about overt censorship anymore. The real game is played with algorithms that manipulate searchability and visibility. Take, for instance, the Joe Rogan interview with Donald Trump, which garnered an astronomical 34 million views before it was practically buried by YouTube and Google's algorithmic tweaks. We might as well call this digital sabotage. Rogan, in an act of defiance, migrated the full episode to platform X, where it could breathe outside the algorithmic iron lung.

Navigating this labyrinth of censorship and its more insidious cousin, quasi-censorship, has become the modus operandi for alternative media. It's not just about creating content; it's about outsmarting a system designed to muffle dissent. This isn't freedom of speech; it's a survival game where only the most cunning or the most compliant thrive.

Have you ever pondered why I frequently encourage you to become a paid subscriber? It's because my content doesn't attract sponsorships, and out of 5,500 readers, only 4% are willing to support this blog financially. This situation is not just disheartening; it's outright depressing.

Here we are, staring at the gaping maw of history being rewritten—not by historians, but by the sudden silence of our digital guardians. Imagine, if you will, a world where Archive.org, the guardian of internet history since 1994, has ceased its vigilant watch over the ebb and flow of online discourse. Yes, for the first time in three decades, we've entered an era where our digital past is not just forgotten; it's being actively erased.

Now, let's talk about this so-called 'technical event'—a euphemism for what I believe is a calculated act of digital amnesia. Since October 8-10, we've been living through a period where our collective memory is being held hostage. Why, you might ask? Is it because the truth might jeopardize an election, or is it simply because those in power fear the scrutiny of an informed populace?

Consider this: in the absence of real-time archiving, how do we verify the veracity of information from those critical days leading up to what's been pompously labeled as the 'most consequential election'? Without Archive.org, we're not just losing data; we're losing our ability to hold truth to power. This isn't about left or right; it's about the liberty to know, the freedom to remember.

Let's dive deeper into the 'trouble' at Archive.org. A DDOS attack, they say, struck with surgical precision on October 8, 2024. Oh, how convenient that the guardians of our digital legacy can be so easily toppled by an influx of malicious traffic. Now, the once vibrant Archive.org limps along as a read-only relic, showing us only what was, but not what is. Isn't it poetic justice, or perhaps irony, that the only institution tasked with chronicling our digital existence now only reflects our past, leaving us blind to the present?

The implications here are not just academic. This isn't merely about historians missing a footnote. This is about real-time manipulation of information, where corporations and governments can operate without the looming threat of accountability. When the only mirror to the internet's soul is shattered, what does that say about transparency? About truth?

So, here we stand, at the threshold of a 'new normal' where the internet, that vast expanse of human thought and action, has no memory of today. Researchers, activists, journalists—indeed, anyone who cares about the integrity of information—have been stripped of the tools needed to scrutinize, compare, and challenge the powers that be. Is this not a form of digital disenfranchisement?

Every article you’ve read on here is the result of the vast collection if the Internet Archive. 90% of that content’s sources were later scrubbed off the live Internet, so accessing archive copies was the only way you and I could know and verify what was true. It was the same with the World Health Organization and its disparagement of natural immunity which was later changed. We were able to document the shifting definitions thanks only to this tool which is now disabled.

What this means is the following: Any website can post anything today and take it down tomorrow and leave no record of what they posted unless some user somewhere happened to take a screenshot. Even then there is no way to verify its authenticity. The standard approach to know who said what and when is now gone. That is to say that the whole Internet is already being censored in real time so that during these crucial weeks, when vast swaths of the public fully expect foul play, anyone in the information industry can get away with anything and not get caught.

We know what you are thinking. Surely this DDOS attack was not a coincidence. The timing was just too perfect. And maybe that is right. We just do not know. Does Archive.org suspect something along those lines? Here is what they say:

“Last week, along with a DDOS attack and exposure of patron email addresses and encrypted passwords, the Internet Archive’s website javascript was defaced, leading us to bring the site down to access and improve our security. The stored data of the Internet Archive is safe and we are working on resuming services safely. This new reality requires heightened attention to cyber security and we are responding. We apologize for the impact of these library services being unavailable.”

Oh, how quaint, a mere apology for the digital equivalent of burning the library at Alexandria. Let's dissect this, shall we? Cyber security? More like cyber censorship. The 'exposure of patron email addresses and encrypted passwords' sounds suspiciously convenient, doesn't it? Almost like a cover story for an operation designed to dismantle the very backbone of our digital memory.

The orchestrated dismantling of the Internet's verifiable history isn't just a slip-up; it's a deliberate strategy, tailor-made for those who thrive in the shadows of power. This isn't about stakeholder models; it's about control.

The Declaration of the Future of the Internet isn't some benevolent blueprint for digital utopia—it's a blueprint for digital oligarchy where only the 'relevant authorities' and their chosen cronies dictate what's remembered and what's forgotten. This multi-stakeholder approach? It's a smokescreen for ensuring that those in power can act without leaving fingerprints, ensuring their misdeeds and manipulations remain untraceable.

To be sure, a librarian from Archive.org has the audacity to claim that while the Wayback Machine is in read-only mode, crawling and archiving continue. Oh, how reassuring! But when will these archived materials see the light of day? Before the election, when transparency could sway voters, or conveniently after, when the dust has settled? The fact that these materials aren't accessible now, when they could serve a democratic purpose, screams of a more sinister intent. If the technology exists to make this information available, why isn't it? Because, contrary to their claims, the powers behind these institutions are not interested in openness but in control and obfuscation.

Disturbingly, this erasure of Internet memory is not an isolated incident. For years, Google provided a cached version of web pages - a time capsule of information integrity. Now, they've pulled the plug. They boast about their expansive server farms, yet suddenly, this service, which could hold entities accountable, is deemed unnecessary?

The timing is too perfectly aligned with the Archive.org crash to be coincidental. This isn't about server space or technological limitations; it's about who gets to decide what history looks like, especially when it's within spitting distance of an election where information—or the lack thereof—can tilt the scales of power.

Other disturbing trends are transforming Internet search results into sanitized, AI-manipulated echo chambers of establishment narratives. The old web standard was refreshingly democratic: search rankings reflected the collective wisdom of the internet's users through clicks, links, and citations.

But Google has abandoned this organic approach for a new, shadowy system where “trusted sources” are anointed by algorithms, not by the populace. What's 'trustworthy' isn't decided by the public's interaction but by Google's inscrutable, possibly biased, criteria. This shift is not just about improving search quality—it's about controlling the narrative, ensuring that only the voices deemed 'appropriate' by the tech giants are heard.

Moreover, the tool that once democratized web visibility, Alexa, has vanished from the scene. Remember Alexa? That was the independent service everyone used to gauge a website's traffic and influence. Its acquisition by Amazon in '99 was initially seen as a vote of confidence in its utility. It became the de facto metric for web status.

But then, Amazon, in a twist of corporate irony, decided to name its home assistant, which listens in on your life, “Alexa.” This wasn't just a case of brand confusion; it was a strategic move to dilute and eventually dismantle a tool that provided transparency in digital influence. By muddling the brand, Amazon effectively neutered a resource that allowed for genuine public scrutiny of web content's reach.

This is how an entire generation of web technicians functioned. The system was far from perfect, but it was transparent, user-driven, and functional. Now, with the original Alexa's tools gone, who decides what's relevant? Not the users, but the corporations with their opaque metrics and AI-driven agendas.

It's not just about what you can find online; it's about what you're allowed to find. Where once there was a bustling marketplace of ideas, we now have curated galleries where only the 'right' art is displayed. If this is progress, then progress has a funny way of looking like regression to me.

In a move as sudden as it was inexplicable, Amazon in 2022 pulled the plug on Alexa, the web ranking tool, not by selling it or even pricing it out of reach, but by making it vanish into the digital ether. This wasn't a business decision; it was an eradication. The ability to gauge a website's influence without delving into costly, cumbersome alternatives was abruptly stripped away.

No one could fathom the reasoning. Here was an industry standard, a benchmark for digital relevance, and it was obliterated. The implications were clear: transparency in digital influence was no longer on offer for the common user. Now, to understand the web's landscape, you'd need to pay through the nose or navigate through proprietary mazes, effectively putting control back into the hands of those who can afford to pay for the privilege of information.

All of these seemingly disparate events converge into a narrative of control and obfuscation. The Covid debacle of 2020-2023, marked by global censorship and a tidal wave of propaganda, didn't just accelerate this trend; it turbocharged it.

One wonders if anyone will recall the days of genuine digital freedom. The deliberate sabotage of Archive.org, a digital library meant to preserve our collective memory, is a chilling testament to this new era: an era where memory itself is under siege.

As we stand now, weeks of web history have vanished into the void. We're left guessing what's been lost, what narratives have been altered or disappeared entirely. And the return of this service? That's anyone's guess, with every passing day cementing the possibility that it might never return, leaving us with a history that ends abruptly on October 8, 2024.

The Internet was meant to be a beacon of freedom and democracy. Reverting to that ideal now would take nothing short of a digital revolution, as what's emerging in its place is a controlled, curated version of reality, tailored by those with the power to define what we remember and what we forget.

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