Internet Censorship: A Growing Concern

The Rise of Censorship

Internet censorship is becoming increasingly common, to the point of being considered normal. Despite ongoing legal battles and increased public scrutiny, mainstream social media platforms have been more aggressive in their censorship efforts in recent months. Podcasters have become aware of the content that will be immediately removed and often debate over ambiguous content. Some platforms, like Brownstone, have abandoned YouTube for Rumble, sacrificing large audiences to ensure their content remains accessible.

Manipulation of Algorithms

Censorship isn't always about outright removal of content. Today's algorithms have a variety of tools that can affect a content's visibility and discoverability. For instance, the Joe Rogan interview with Donald Trump accumulated an impressive 34 million views before YouTube and Google adjusted their search engines to make it difficult to find. This led Rogan to upload the full three-hour interview on another platform.

The Business of Alternative Media

Navigating through this maze of censorship and quasi-censorship has become a fundamental part of the business model for alternative media.

Underlying Technical Events

While high-profile censorship cases make headlines, there are underlying technical events that are significantly impacting the ability of historians to trace and narrate events. The service Archive.org, which has been archiving internet content since 1994, has stopped taking snapshots of content across all platforms. For the first time in 30 years, we have gone a significant period of time - from October 8-10 - without this service archiving the internet in real time.

The Memory Black Hole

As it stands, we cannot verify content posted during three weeks of October leading up to a highly contentious and significant election. This isn't about political bias or ideological discrimination. No websites on the internet are being archived in ways that are accessible to users. In essence, our primary information system's memory is currently a vast black hole.

The Archive.org Crisis

The problems at Archive.org started on October 8, 2024, when the service was suddenly hit with a massive Denial of Service attack (DDOS) that not only disrupted the service but nearly caused its complete failure. Archive.org managed to recover as a read-only service, but only for content posted before the attack. The service has not yet resumed public display of mirrored sites on the internet.

Impact on Research

This means that the only source on the entire World Wide Web that mirrors content in real time has been disabled. For the first time since the invention of the web browser, researchers have lost the ability to compare past and future content. This is a crucial tool for researchers investigating government and corporate actions.

Implications of Archive.org's Disruption

Archive.org's service allowed Brownstone researchers to discover exactly what the CDC had said about Plexiglas, filtration systems, mail-in ballots, and rental moratoriums. This content was later removed from the live internet, so accessing archived copies was the only way to verify what was true. The same was true for the World Health Organization's changing stance on natural immunity. This tool, which allowed us to document these shifting definitions, is now disabled.

The Consequences

The implication is that any website can now post anything and remove it the next day without leaving a record of what they posted, unless a user happens to take a screenshot. Even then, there's no way to verify its authenticity. The standard method of knowing who said what and when has disappeared. The entire internet is being censored in real time, allowing anyone in the information industry to get away with anything without getting caught during these crucial weeks.

Was the DDOS Attack a Coincidence?

Many people might suspect that the timing of the DDOS attack on Archive.org was too perfect to be a coincidence. Archive.org has stated that along with the DDOS attack, their website's JavaScript was defaced, leading them to shut down the site to assess and improve their security. They assure users that the stored data of the Internet Archive is safe and that they are working on resuming services securely.

Deep State Involvement?

While there's no way to confirm, the effort to erase the internet's verified history aligns with the stakeholder model of information distribution that has been prioritized globally. The Declaration of the Future of the Internet makes it clear that the internet should be governed through a multi-stakeholder approach, where governments and relevant authorities partner with academics, civil society, the private sector, and the technical community. All these stakeholders benefit from the ability to operate online without leaving a trace.

When Will Archive.org Resume?

A librarian at Archive.org has stated that while the Wayback Machine is in read-only mode, web crawling and archiving have continued. Those materials will be available via the Wayback Machine once services are secured. However, it is unclear when this will happen.

Erasure of Internet Memory

This erasure of internet memory is not an isolated incident. For many years, Google offered a cached version of the link you were seeking just below the live version. However, this service is now completely gone. In fact, the Google cache service officially ended just a week or two before the Archive.org crash, at the end of September 2024.

AI-Controlled Lists of Establishment-Approved Narratives

Other concerning trends are turning internet search results increasingly into AI-controlled lists of establishment-approved narratives. Google now uses very different metrics to rank search results, including what it considers "trusted sources" and other opaque, subjective determinations.

The Disappearance of Alexa

The most widely used service that once ranked websites based on traffic, Alexa, is now gone. After Amazon bought the company that created it in 1999, it suddenly took down the web ranking tool in 2022. It didn't sell it or raise the prices; it just made it disappear. Now, no one can figure out the traffic-based website rankings of anything without paying high prices for difficult-to-use proprietary products.

A Shift in the Information Landscape

All these seemingly unrelated data points are part of a long trajectory that has transformed our information landscape into something unrecognizable. The Covid events of 2020-2023, with massive global censorship and propaganda efforts, greatly accelerated these trends.

No More Memory

One wonders if anyone will remember what it was once like. The hacking and hobbling of Archive.org underscores the point: there will be no more memory.

Three Weeks of Lost Web Content

As of this writing, three weeks of web content have not been archived. What we are missing and what has changed is anyone's guess. And we have no idea when the service will come back. It is entirely possible that it will not come back, that the only real history to which we can take recourse will be pre-October 8, 2024, the date on which everything changed.

The Vision of a Free and Democratic Internet

The internet was founded to be free and democratic. It will require herculean efforts at this point to restore that vision, because something else is quickly replacing it.

Bottom Line

The internet, once a beacon of free speech and democratic ideals, is increasingly becoming a space of censorship and control. The recent events surrounding Archive.org and the disappearance of key tools for verifying and tracing content have raised serious concerns about the future of information accessibility and transparency. What do you think about this alarming trend? Do you believe that the vision of a free and democratic internet can be restored? Share your thoughts and this article with your friends. Don't forget to sign up for the Daily Briefing, which is delivered every day at 6pm.