4 ms·

Internet Archive’s Trump Archive Launches Today

38 points by bane 10y ago

SteveNuts 10y ago
Why is the archive going political? I would hope they'd be a bit more unbiased than this.
- danso 10y ago
  I could do without the integrated fact-checking, but I don't see this as being necessarily partisan. Trump is the first modern president without a history of public service, i.e. Very few public records about him. Most of the documents generated about him are media appearances.
- yakult 10y ago
  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 10y ago
  I wish Facebook, Google, Twitter, CCN, NYT, WP were less biased too! Oh, btw. they also archived Hillary emails https://archive.org/details/hillary-clinton-emails-august-31-release https://archive.org/details/hillary-clinton-emails-august-31...
RubyPinch 10y ago
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.
- yakult 10y ago
  'Truth' should go in scare quotes here. If they're going to dedicate an entire program to attacking someone, and they hold the reins in what goes in the archives and what does not, why would you expect the end result to be the full, unadulterated truth? Rather than out-of-context soundbites and a highlight reel of whatever makes Trump look bad?
  - RubyPinch 10y ago
    I completely agree with that. However, I do think the current situation is valuable regardless. As long as we have some people on each side, doing whatever they can to attack their enemies with truth. It might not inform us of how great each candidate is, but will give us a pretty good idea of how bad each candidate is. - - - Non-partisan truth finders are obviously better, but only if they are actually non-partisan! People who control the truth without making it obvious they do, I'd find more concerning!
- throwaway7767 10y ago
  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.
  - danso 10y ago
    The timing and technological era is important here. I don't think the Archive was doing its Political TV project until this past year [0], so the question of why they didn't do it for Obama doesn't apply. And since Clinton didn't win, we don't know what they would have done for her. 2008 is a long time to think back on but I don't think that the Archive had the tech/scale/people to implement the political ad tracker back in 2008 -- it's a massive amount of video, for one thing https://politicaladarchive.org/ https://politicaladarchive.org/ [0] https://blog.archive.org/2016/01/22/political-tv-ad-archive-launches-today/ https://blog.archive.org/2016/01/22/political-tv-ad-archive-...
akerro 10y ago
National Library of Memes.
SlipperySlope 10y ago
Awesome record for history. Go for it!
SlipperySlope 10y ago
Awesome record for history. Go for it!

38 points by bane 10y ago

SteveNuts 10y ago

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

danso 10y ago
I could do without the integrated fact-checking, but I don't see this as being necessarily partisan. Trump is the first modern president without a history of public service, i.e. Very few public records about him. Most of the documents generated about him are media appearances.
yakult 10y ago
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 10y ago
I wish Facebook, Google, Twitter, CCN, NYT, WP were less biased too! Oh, btw. they also archived Hillary emails https://archive.org/details/hillary-clinton-emails-august-31-release https://archive.org/details/hillary-clinton-emails-august-31...

RubyPinch 10y ago

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.

yakult 10y ago
'Truth' should go in scare quotes here. If they're going to dedicate an entire program to attacking someone, and they hold the reins in what goes in the archives and what does not, why would you expect the end result to be the full, unadulterated truth? Rather than out-of-context soundbites and a highlight reel of whatever makes Trump look bad?
- RubyPinch 10y ago
  I completely agree with that. However, I do think the current situation is valuable regardless. As long as we have some people on each side, doing whatever they can to attack their enemies with truth. It might not inform us of how great each candidate is, but will give us a pretty good idea of how bad each candidate is. - - - Non-partisan truth finders are obviously better, but only if they are actually non-partisan! People who control the truth without making it obvious they do, I'd find more concerning!
throwaway7767 10y ago
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.
- danso 10y ago
  The timing and technological era is important here. I don't think the Archive was doing its Political TV project until this past year [0], so the question of why they didn't do it for Obama doesn't apply. And since Clinton didn't win, we don't know what they would have done for her. 2008 is a long time to think back on but I don't think that the Archive had the tech/scale/people to implement the political ad tracker back in 2008 -- it's a massive amount of video, for one thing https://politicaladarchive.org/ https://politicaladarchive.org/ [0] https://blog.archive.org/2016/01/22/political-tv-ad-archive-launches-today/ https://blog.archive.org/2016/01/22/political-tv-ad-archive-...

akerro 10y ago

National Library of Memes.

SlipperySlope 10y ago

Awesome record for history. Go for it!

SlipperySlope 10y ago

Awesome record for history. Go for it!