## Colophon tags:: [[&article]] [[🎵]] url:: https://web.archive.org/web/20261019172805/https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/10/blocking-internet-archive-will-not-stop-ai/689065/ date:: [[2026-10-20]] %% title:: The Internet Needs a Memory type:: [[clipped-note]] file:: published:: 2026-10-19T16:00:00Z [Click to Archive](https://web.archive.org/save/https://web.archive.org/web/20261019172805/https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/10/blocking-internet-archive-will-not-stop-ai/689065/) %% archive:: ## Notes short:: - But blocking a nonprofit library is the wrong response to this problem. Impeding the Wayback Machine’s preservation work will not prevent powerful AI companies from gathering training data. It will certainly not restore the advertising-based business model that supported newspapers in the 20th century, a business model that has long since collapsed. What it will do is prevent historians, researchers, courts, ordinary readers—and, most ironic, journalists themselves—from consulting an accurate record of what once appeared on the web. It is difficult to quantify the scale of what we stand to lose. A continuous record of web activity is an enormously powerful accountability tool, especially at a time when seeking the truth and reporting it has become ever more complicated and the informational environment is growing only more complex A crucial fact in this debate is one that publishers themselves know better than anyone: Journalists rely on the Wayback Machine. They use it to recover deleted tweets, verify past public statements by powerful individuals who wish to avoid scrutiny, examine earlier versions of government documents, and establish what a person or institution said about a subject before some controversy or scandal prompted them to change course. Journalists use the Wayback Machine to see defunct websites and the archives of closed newsrooms. They use it when the primary evidence for a story has vanished from the web. A news organization that blocks the Wayback Machine may believe it is acting in the best interest of its journalists. But instead it is dismantling one of journalism’s most important investigative instruments. My argument is simple: The public record needs an independent steward. A society that cannot inspect its past is easier to deceive Hafner and Palmer are among thousands of reporters whose use of the Wayback Machine has contributed to extraordinary journalism. A politics reporter may find that an agency quietly removed a document, or even a single sentence, in the face of criticism. A city-hall reporter may need an earlier version of a municipal page containing budget figures, meeting records, and public-health guidance. A technology reporter may need to compare successive versions of a platform’s terms of service. An investigative journalist examining allegations against a public figure may need to scour a decade-old webpage that has since been deleted. Government agencies routinely scrub important information from their sites, and the Wayback Machine is a faster and more practical method of discovery than a Freedom of Information Act request. These are not hypothetical benefits. Over and over and over again, the Wayback Machine has confirmed facts that would be irretrievable without an independent archive. Those efforts can and should continue. Publishers and archives can distinguish ordinary human consultation from sustained bulk extraction. We can develop better methods for identifying abusive traffic, create responsible-access arrangements, improve communication during high-volume incidents, and discuss access to application programming interfaces separately from the preservation of publicly available pages. Most important, we can preserve records while applying reasonable protections against mass downloading. The press cannot have it both ways. Journalists describe their work as the first draft of history—but a draft of history must survive if it is to be revised, improved upon, and understood ## Full Text ![[The Internet Needs a Memory - 20261020 - fulltext]]