PSA: Internet Archive "glitch" deletes years of user data and accounts

While I absolutely understand the frustration of losing years worth of "preservation-level quality" data, you have to admit that the Internet Archive is a free service we do not deserve. They (the folks behind The Internet Archive) do not owe us anything.

Surely, the loss of some user metadata is a catastrophe on par with the burning of the Library of Alexandria. Perhaps next time, the Internet Archive should consult their vast army of paid engineers and their bottomless coffers to ensure such a calamity never befalls humanity again. After all, what's the point of preserving vast swathes of human knowledge and culture if one can't access their personal bookmarks from 2007?

Give them a break, they do a lot of work, all funded via donations.

If your data is so critical that it cannot ever go down, host it yourself.

Profiles over there have been glitchy for a while now. I gave up on favorites years ago and just bookmarked everything of interest in my browser instead. User metadata is probably a low priority item for their staff. Still one of my top five favorite sites on the web.

> create new accounts and silently relinking their old uploads only if the new account has same email as the old account

Why can't they just relink all the content and force password resets? Something doesn't add up. Looking at the forums, it seems like someone is doing manual remediation.

Just re the username thing, from what I've seen in the past even changing an active username just once seems to prevent the same user from reverting back to their original username.

So could be their account system is a bit primitive in that regard (given that official replies for this news makes it sound like they're utilizing the existing system for restoring content to new usernames, rather than reverting directly via backups). I don't doubt there will be some official clarification though.

Have they actually lost the data these people contributed? Or just the metadata which links it to their account - such that the data is still accessible if you link to it directly (not via the uploader’s user profile)?

I think the answer is the second not the first, but this blog post isn’t very clear as to what is going on.

Losing archived data - that would be more serious. Losing metadata linking it to the uploader - far from ideal but not as bad.

Apparently they're working on restoring stuff?

also:

> This story is still developing, and the press have been notified

jeez calm down with the self-aggrandizing

The Internet Archive is one of the wonders of the digital age. I get a proud humanistic feeling every time I walk by their building on Funston and Clement, a former temple that totally looks the part.

There was a fire there about a decade ago that took out a small addition and a restaurant next door. That addition had a "9/11 in pictures" window display that was interesting and kind of eerie. Luckily they were able to save the main building, or the internet as we know it would be quite a bit worse, and the internet as we knew it might be gone.

This part is a bit odd, from the uhh... "support":

"and, for the last time, the old user name is no longer available"

As we all know, things in databases are immutable and can never be changed.

Geeze, Karen take a breath. That is sad news, and it really sucks to lose data

At the same time it is a shoestring budget nonprofit, doing tons of good for the world, thanklessly.

It is not a right, a government service, or even a service you pay for. You have no right to demand anything, just because they are kindly providing you value.

Cut them some slack, and stop acting like they own you anything. Maybe even gasp thank them for doing so much good, with no support, for everyone in the world, for free

Is there an internet archive archive?

Free service loses data and offers poor customer service! News at 11!

I love how the author unironically links to a donation page but doesn’t mention anything about donating to Internet archive.

The internet archive where data is kept safe forever has deleted a great many accounts of an unknown number and refuses to map the favorites of these now non existent accounts to new accounts signing up with different emails. They call this a glitch. The press has been informed.

Feels bad man... Hope this all gets fixed.

In other news, welcome to the datahoarder community.

Do better man with ginger beard.