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    Reddit will block the Internet Archive


    Reddit will block the Internet Archive

    Posted by Temporary_Potato_254

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    15 Comments

    1. cranberrylimeade420 on

      > Reddit says that it has caught AI companies scraping its data from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, so it’s going to start blocking the Internet Archive from indexing the vast majority of Reddit.

      but… hasn’t [Reddit already given our posts and data to AI companies](https://observer.com/2025/06/reddit-launches-new-ai-tools-data/) all on their own? this just feels like they were looking for a reason to attack the Internet Archive.

      if I have to choose between Reddit and the Internet Archive, bye bye Reddit

    3. lakerdave on

      I have a feeling they’re not so concerned about the AI part as they are the archive part

    4. Aggressive-Row5861 on

      I was fully expecting this to be Reddit’s method of stopping links that bypass paywalled articles, but apparently it’s because AI is scarping data from the wayback machine.

    8. ItIsSeriousPiece on

      I get this. From the headline I thought it meant we can’t post Wayback Machine links on Reddit. But the story is about the opposite- Reddit threads BEING archived. I’m ok with that. When I interact with Reddit I’m not expecting the content to be preserved forever.

    10. AdSmall1198 on

      Oblitio Nominis: 

      In Roman terms, it’s a cousin to damnatio memoriae — but where damnatio memoriae was an active campaign to erase someone from history (destroying statues, chiseling out inscriptions), oblitio nominis leans more toward the intentional fading away of identity through neglect, omission, or quiet deletion. 

      It’s not a loud purge; it’s a suffocation by silence.

      Applied to the internet age, blocking people from archiving old content is pure oblitio nominis. Once original material is deleted and no backup is allowed, the “name” — meaning the authorship, the evidence, the context — slips away. 

      Over time, even the fact that it ever existed becomes unprovable. 

      What remains is a gap in the record, and gaps are where propaganda and revisionist history thrive.

    14. whatthefrockingheck on

      Maybe this makes me sound like a conspiracy theorist but I’m wondering if they’re doing this in part to make it more difficult for people to disseminate information about Gaza. The internet archive is a permanent record of information that allows us to see what powerful people did and when. It’s a lot harder to say “but I didn’t know” when there’s an article out there where you’re openly cheering on war crimes.

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