
Internet Archive’s Trump Archive Launches Today - bane
https://blog.archive.org/2017/01/05/internet-archives-trump-archive-launches-today/
======
RubyPinch
Its quite interesting

Anti-Hillary has gone about leaking private correspondence and documents to
"attack" her

Anti-Trump (which I'm considering Archive to be, considering their prior
reactions), has gone about collecting and documenting public data to "attack"
him.

As a nice side-effect, it does mean that (for the most part) truth is being
used as the weapon of choice, which I think is pretty great. I hope the act of
publishing truth as a political tactic becomes more of a thing over time, even
if partisan.

~~~
throwaway7767
I'd not be surprised if many individuals at the IA dislike Trump, but why do
you say the IA is biased against him?

This effort is a direct continuation of their Political TV archives which have
over the last years become more and more important and popular. They catalog
every political ad around elections, every speech given by every candidate,
etc. As far as I can see, all they're saying here is that they've put the
Trump videos into their own category, which seems reasonable given that he's
an important figure and a lot of people are looking for this data.

I suspect they would have created a similar thing for Hillary if she'd won.
Don't know if they did one for Obama, but as I said this part of the archive
has been growing fast for the past years and gotten them a lot of visibility
from mainstream news media that uses this data, so it's not surprising that
they're using the election result to draw attention to their archive.

~~~
SyneRyder
For their bias, I'd look to their November announcement of creating the
Internet Archive Of Canada:

[https://blog.archive.org/2016/11/29/help-us-keep-the-
archive...](https://blog.archive.org/2016/11/29/help-us-keep-the-archive-free-
accessible-and-private/)

"On November 9th in America, we woke up to a new administration promising
radical change. It was a firm reminder that institutions like ours, built for
the long-term, need to design for change."

~~~
throwaway7767
Interesting. I'll agree that this points to the organization having a
preference in the outcome here.

However, the original post that started this thread seemed to indicate that
their data was suspect due to their bias. I remain very skeptical of this,
given that their goal is to collect all the political ads and speeches,
regardless of party or candidate. Time will tell I guess, but until we have
indications otherwise I will continue to consider the Internet Archive's
library a reliable source of unbiased information.

~~~
tunap
Lessig actively campaigning for electoral revolt left a bad taste in my mouth.
I respect what he/they have done for the common good in the past, but lately
he/they seem more biased vs. Trump than fighting for civil liberties and the
_common_ good.

~~~
beardicus
Lessig has nothing to do with the Internet Archive, as far as I'm aware.

~~~
tunap
Wow, thanks. I made an erroneous connection between the two over a decade ago
and have assumed ever since that Lessig was somehow involved with the
Archive(board member, legal team, early Kahle collaborator). TIL.

------
SteveNuts
Why is the archive going political? I would hope they'd be a bit more unbiased
than this.

~~~
yakult
When they launch something that overtly flaunts their political affiliation
like this, my first thought is: _what will they omit?_

Are we going to get 'curated' history now? Will everything they archive going
forward come with a third-party annotation by a 'non partisan' fact checking
group, or disappear into the ether? The latter option is far cheaper and less
prong to scrutiny, after all.

One primary use I have for IA is to look for things that have been censored
off their original platforms. Will I only be able to find those that align
with their views going forward?

------
akerro
National Library of Memes.

------
SlipperySlope
Awesome record for history.

Go for it!

