When a website is shut down, its contents are at risk of being lost forever. That's where the Archive Team comes in.
in 2019 accidentally wiped out years of content? You shouldn’t rely solely on sites that could go under tomorrow, but if you make that mistake, well, that’s why groups like the Archive Team exists.
“It's less any particular websites than the stories behind them,” says Jason Scott, an archivist and spokesperson for Archive Team, who points to examples like widows being able to access their spouse's writings without their password or young mothers storing children's photos on sites that would otherwise disappear. “The human side of all these sites has been frequently forgotten, and we work to make sure they're just a little harder to forget.
“It's not clear at this point that people understand that the Internet wasn't always a phone-first, of-the-moment, celebrity and gossip and hatred goulash like it is now,” says Scott, explaining that many of the sites the Archive Team saves date back to simpler, earlier eras of the internet. “They may seem sad and static compared to how things are now, [but] they had a huge amount of heart and sense of possibility.
Social media makes it easier than ever to think of the internet as existing in a perpetual now, where things lose value the moment they’re out of your sight. The Archive Team’s work is a reminder that it’s worthwhile to consider the internet’s past, as well as a potential future that cares more about people and their personal data.
“Most companies seem to think announcing the shutdown is the end of their attention, with just a small amount of time before they direct staff to shut things off and call it all a success ,” says Scott. “This feeling of helplessness by the users of these doomed systems is what drives us — to be one other possible situation besides confirmed doom.”