this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2026
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I feel like this has been one of my soapbox things for a while now, but
Americans, the Internet Archive and Wikipedia stand as two of the biggest contributions to human knowledge preservation in all of history. To lose either would be a huge backslide for us as a civilization, and it never really seemed like a genuine threat until recent events over there.
I know there's a lot of other shit going on right now, but you must do what you can to ensure both are able to continue their work.
I still wish someone, somewhere could have backed up Geocities. That was a huge chunk of Internet history lost.
A decent amount of Geocities sites are backed up on the Wayback machine and/or restored via other projects.
Protoweb is really cool, if you wanna browse the internet like its the late 90s again
Iirc there's a torrent of it out there, check tpb. I know I grabbed it a while back, I think it was like 50gb
America is currently run by chaos goblins, and frankly even in the post-Trump era, it's likely that the right will remain chaos goblins for some time. Given that we have only two parties, our policies are bound to be volatile.
In light of that, I would strongly recommend other nations step up with alternatives to function as a backup to American institutions that the world has come to rely on. Think of us as a close friend with sudden-onset schizophrenia and act accordingly.
yeah that comment is kind of tone deaf, appealing to American's who are clearly under strain and factually fighting a cyber and information civil war, while not even discussing any shared responsibility to create a back up or alternative... Thanks guys.
How about you guys show the receipts of how much you have personally donated to both? American here, I have donate to Wikipedia yearly (not much, but I always do).
I feel like this lack of shared responsibility is partially why we're in this mess.
I live in a country that historically goes along with whatever fucking bullshit idea births out of America's flaccid anus of selfish corporate group think. So you can fuck right off with that shared responsibility bullshit. Whenever a reciprocating need for help is required, it always comes with fucking conditions and usually means having to gobble your country's shitcunt cock and balls for some ridiculous payback arrangement that ultimately costs more than the fucking "favour" you did us. Then that festering anal polyp of a child rapist president of yours has the fucking audacity to claim that your allies in that fucking travesty of conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq, took a back seat while your boys murdered, razed and profited off of it all. You can fuck right off with "pay your fair share" utter nonsense. American prosperity is paid for by the blood of it's friends. Now that you're going through a rough bit you're precious about being asked to preserve information that is to the benefit of humanity and accuse someone of being tone deaf...fuck off.
And you somehow don't feel responsible for the actions of your own government but blame Americans for the actions of their government?
Do you not see the hypocrisy there?
but these archives and sources of information are a shared resource for everyone, we all have a responsibility to pitch in and help support them.
Placing the blame squarely at our feet is misguided and seeds your own responsibility to civilization to "flaccid anus of selfish corporate group think."
Like how can you disagree with that? I'm not excusing any actions, or defending the choices, again, I donate to Wikipedia every time they ask - we all are responsible to protect and defend this knowledge, you can't call on Americans alone to do it.
One of my senators is a trust fund baby who started out in venture capital. My other senator insists on receiving fucking faxes. Neither respond to constituents.
My congressman, famous coward Don Bacon, is retiring to take a lobbying job at a defense contractor and was never receptive to feedback anyway. On account of being a coward and all.
It's not the public. It's the corporate copyright and IP holders. Because why should preservation efforts be allowed when the rights holders are letting the IP rot, and sometimes actively deleting source code?
It's not that Americans are against either of these per se; it's that they're indifferent. Ignoring people brainwashed by the right-wing propaganda against Wikipedia, sane Americans largely take Wikipedia for granted. I don't mean that bitterly; I mean that it's been there for 25 years, its quality is better than ever, finances are good, (edit: many people read it through some intermediary), and everyday people therefore don't consider how unstable its position really is, how much work there is to do, and how irreplaceable it is.
As for the IA, sample 1000 American adults. I'll bet you five or fewer could tell you what the hell an "Internet Archive" is.
North America is Wikipedia's largest funding source by a factor of more than 2. I'm not sure why you're calling Americans out here.
Are you supposing that IA is better known in other countries than in the US? Are you basing that on anything?
Because the original comment (not made by me) was an appeal to Americans. The subsequent comment said it's not the [American] public. Thus I'm specifically limiting what I'm saying to Americans, regardless of the relative extent to which it applies elsewhere. Because that's who the conversation – that I didn't start – is about.
The rest of the conversation, though, was about a (mostly) exclusively American thing, relating to lobbying and legislation against Wikipedia and IA. I've got no problem with shitting on the US for things we're actually doing, but saying the public doesn't support Wikipedia when we're actually the #1 supporter worldwide of Wikipedia feels kind of disingenuous.
Like I said, active support in hearts and minds – being ready and equipped to defend it if it comes under threat. Relatively, North America is the most supportive financially compared to the rest of the world. To the extent that's related to a bunch of factors, I'm not qualified to say (and I'll say I'm a fuck of a lot more qualified than most).
When I say that people take Wikipedia for granted, you can hopefully tell that I'm talking about it in the same way people often used to take basic executive branch norms for granted before Trump's terms. Not everyone did; people who were especially politically engaged probably didn't. Most people would've told you they supported them; an overwhelming majority of people who weren't far-right nutjobs would've. But they often treated them as "too big to fail", and they were blindsided as Trump destroyed them.
You can easily download wikipedia to a USB drive. Do it yourself pal
Already got a copy on my NAS, I update it every year or two when I remember to.
But you've missed the point, my personal access to a Wikipedia text snapshot is not equivalent to the free access of information to everyone. The information just existing somewhere isn't enough.
And anyway a person can't practically keep their own copy of the Internet Archive. It takes up something like a quarter of an exabyte
It existing somewhere is better than nothing, though. Internet archive on the other hand, that one is a lot harder.
Yes of course
But every single scrap of information in Wikipedia exists somewhere else
Its value is twofold and exclusively these two when you boil everything down:
There's very little else we've created that hits both of those, but the second is by far the most important.
if we cant protect them, we didnt deserve them in the first place.