Some news organizations are restricting access to the #WaybackMachine over fears of AI scraping.

[internetarchive@mastodon.archive.org]

Some news organizations are restricting access to the #WaybackMachine over fears of AI scraping. Mark Graham @mark, director of the Wayback Machine, explains why these concerns are unfounded and that blocking archives risks harming the public record.

Get the story on Techdirt
https://www.techdirt.com/2026/02/17/preserving-the-web-is-not-the-problem-losing-it-is/

#techdirt

[tychi@merveilles.town]

@internetarchive @mark

Honest feedback from someone that’s never worked there but been around enough to be the ear for people that don’t feel heard?

The archive needs an actual way to distance themselves from

- crypto
- ai

The public is losing faith in those “institutions” and they are irrelevant to the archive’s mission for “universal access to all knowledge” and actually are starting to risk that mission.

Speaking for myself, the AI Ben Franklin bit left me feeling like the humanity of the audience failed to connect with the humanity of the archive, for what gain?