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Medium tries to prevent people reading deleted articles on the Wayback Machine?
- ayepif 9y agoWhat are some ways around it as is mentioned in the article?
- firefoxd 9y agoProbably disable JavaScript
- rambojazz 9y agoEither disable JavaScript before visiting the Wayback Machine, or stop the loading of the page just after it has loaded the text but before it performs the redirection (a bit tricky, you have to stop it at the right time).
- gnud 9y agoYou can't use the wayback machine without JS though, can you?
- JackCh 9y agoGiven the link to the archive, it works without javascript for me. I disabled scripts from archive.org with umatrix and the archived page loaded just fine. The only difference from usual is the top bar that archive.org normally displays isn't present. However you do seem to need javascript enabled to query the wayback machine from web.archive.org: "The Wayback Machine requires your browser to support JavaScript, please email info@archive.org if you have any questions about this. "
- phnofive 9y ago> Medium tries to prevent people reading deleted articles on The Wayback Machine Please use the article headline. However, the automatic redirect makes this pretty close to the truth.
- scandox 9y agoYes probably should have used my own title. It's just difficult for me to accept a headline so lacking in pith. Edit: have updated title
- phnofive 9y agoAwesome. I am stepping through the page execution and trying to figure out what is embedded in the page that would cause a redirect if the article is deleted. Did you find it?
- jsty 9y agoArchive.is doesn't seem to be affected by the redirect strategy. article: http://archive.is/gPcBW http://archive.is/gPcBW
- makomk 9y agoArchive.is goes to a lot of work in order to make archiving pages on widely-used sites actually work, from what I can tell.
- MarkusAllen 9y agoArchive.is is awesome. It just works.
- codetrotter 9y agoArchive.is is awesome but I’ve seen multiple really big sites archive poorly. Some of them because the version of Chrome that archive.is is using is getting quite old. They are running Chrome/41.0, which was released in the beginning of 2015. https://archive.is/3PxoF https://archive.is/3PxoF > It is very tricky to run, it depends on an exact version of Chrome, which binary also must be patched in order to reduce security (to allow saving content of frames, etc). https://blog.archive.is/post/45984102073/can-the-archived-pages-be-downloaded-for-local-use https://blog.archive.is/post/45984102073/can-the-archived-pa...
- fiatjaf 9y agoWho pays for it?
- rambojazz 9y agoI've always asked the same question myself... I don't think they are a nonprofit like the IA. Their FAQ says "It is privately funded" and wrt ads "I cannot make a promise that it will not". Years ago there was an archiving service that displayed ads, but unfortunately I don't remember which one it was... I vaguely remember it could have been archive.is, but I'm not sure.
- bazooka2th 9y agoIs this an April Fools' joke? Too much first person. Also, Wayback Machine "is frequently used by journalists and citizens to review dead websites". This isn't some fucking standard; it's Wayback Machine's responsibility to archive websites, not the other way around.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- thogenhaven 9y agoI wonder how wayback machine will work after GDPR? I can't imagine they can just show content that the authors deleted from primary sources?
- rambojazz 9y agoI haven't read GDPR in details, but isn't GDPR concerned only with personal/private data? The Wayback Machine only archives public pages as far as I can tell...
- scandox 9y agoYes but the article itself is user-provided content to Medium that the author has a right to ask to be deleted (under GDPR), presumably? So perhaps it will be simply a matter of the The Wayback Machine having to have a policy to delete things if requested?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mjn 9y agoThe Wayback Machine has always had a policy to delete things if requested, so there's no real change there. The most common way site owners do that is by changing robots.txt. In line with the Oakland Archive Policy [1], the Internet Archive respects robots.txt retroactively, so a site owner can get archived versions deleted just by excluding them in the robots file. Besides that, they respond to DMCA takedowns, one-off removal requests [2], etc. [1] http://www2.sims.berkeley.edu/research/conferences/aps/removal-policy.html http://www2.sims.berkeley.edu/research/conferences/aps/remov... [2] http://archive.org/about/faqs.php#2 http://archive.org/about/faqs.php#2
- adventured 9y agoChanging robots.txt does not delete content from their archives. If you remove the robots.txt file, the content becomes viewable again. There's no scenario where they can respond to the vast scale of GDPR violations that their archive likely represents, when it comes to manually removing content. There are only three possibilities: avoid the EU as much as possible, dump the archives and start over with an entirely different approach, or shut down. Besides that, these laws are going to get a lot more strict and difficult to comply with, not less strict, over time. This is merely the beginning of aggressive regulation of the Internet. Regulation of the Internet will only move one direction from here, in the direction of increasing burden and ever greater regulation. It's hard to imagine Archive.org's archives surviving what's coming.
- thisisit 9y agoIf the page loads completely then yes it redirects to medium.com. But you can read the article by interrupting the redirect and clicking the stop button.
- scandox 9y agoThis is true. It took me five goes, but I am over 40 and my mouse finger is not what it was.
- dangelov 9y agoJust hitting Esc on the keyboard should also work to stop the redirect/load.
- StavrosK 9y agoWhy mouse? Click the link and press escape. You youngsters with your mouses.
- lostlogin 9y agoAnd there you go, it turns out that ‘mouses’ is an accepted pleural for a computer mouse. Less horrible than ‘Magic Trackpad 2 — Silvers’ I suppose.
- dontchooseanick 9y agoYou might like that : root@localhost:~# links -dump 'https://web.archive.org/web/20160826003417/https://medium.com/@Svenskunganka/interviewing-my-mother-a-mainframe-cobol-programmer-c693d40d88f7' https://web.archive.org/web/20160826003417/https://medium.co... | nc seashells.io 1337 Results at https://pastebin.com/SMGBscz2 https://pastebin.com/SMGBscz2
- scandox 9y agoI used w3m -dump https://web.archive.org/web/20160826003417/https://medium.com/@Svenskunganka/interviewing-my-mother-a-mainframe-cobol-programmer-c693d40d88f7 https://web.archive.org/web/20160826003417/https://medium.co... Produces a fairly nice, readable version also.
- dvfjsdhgfv 9y agoActually it's not necessary to use text-mode browsers as the trick used here is JS-related, so it's enough to switch JS off. Actually most nuisances on the web today are JS-related so I have a button for quickly disabling it. It works like a charm, also for this case.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- imglorp 9y agoHey, seashells is neat. I can't get a non-http port out of corporate nannywall though.
- onetimemanytime 9y agoMaybe I'm out of touch with HN, but kudos to Medium. I delete the article for a reason, why should someone read it years later (regardless of the website or format.) It's my article
- leereeves 9y agoWhat would credibility mean in a world where lies, mistakes, and fits of emotion could be erased completely?
- psyc 9y agoI'm not sure I understand the question. As it is now, the vast majority of my transgressions in real life disappear into a memory hole. What makes the internet so special in that regard? You want there to be a permanent digital record of people's mistakes, why? So that those best at hiding their defects can get ahead? Why is that desirable?
- leereeves 9y agoFor roughly the same reason schools administer tests and keep permanent records of grades. An author's track record for honesty and accuracy is (was?) the foundation of credibility.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- krapp 9y agoAnd yet the same community that insists the internet act as a permanent, immutable and irrevocable platform for "judging honesty" tends to object when intelligence agencies, law enforcement and employers use their data for just that purpose. Even if it were the case that one could only judge a person's honesty and accuracy from the "track record" of content published to the web that can be traced to their identity, this assumes that all such content is unbiased and factual, and that any interpretation of that content would also be unbiased and factual, but that isn't true.
- erikb 9y agoI don't really see why this is a deal. If I decide I want to delete the content I put on Medium I very well want them to delete it everywhere else as well. One could read that as "Medium tries to protect their users content".
- scandox 9y agoI don't disagree or agree really. I was just interested in the fact they had any kind of policy on it at all.
- xtrapolate 9y agoLook everyone, it's the non conformist! Downvote away! On a serious note - people talk all the time about "the right to be forgotten". Medium is securing and enforcing that right on behalf of its users, how is that a wrong thing to be doing?
- baby 9y agoCompletely agree with your comment, not sure why you're being downvoted. A blog is the same thing as a facebook account, would you like it if you couldn't delete your pictures on facebook?
- jobigoud 9y agoA blog is not like a Facebook post. It's more like writing an essay, publishing it in a book, and then asking libraries to burn their copy of the book.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- baby 9y agoWhen I delete an article from my blog, it's because I don't want anyone to be able to read it anymore. Be it shame, inaccuracy, change of mood, etc... I think there is something fundamentally wrong with wanting to have EVERYTHING backed up at all time against the creators' will.
- zeth___ 9y agoA simple solution: don't publish things you don't want people to read. This is no different to burning books that the authors no longer support the views in.
- baby 9y agoSo you're incentivizing people not to write. That's bad, we should encourage people to write. It's OK to make mistakes. I see this problem as an even bigger problem with kids. Kids put everything they do online, and they will probably be ashamed of a lot of these things later in life. Comparing that to Facebook: I guess I shouldn't upload pictures on Facebook because it's against my right to want to see one of my old picture disappear later?
- zeth___ 9y agoIf no one can read an a book what good is it? You are purposefully muddying the issue of access. If you upload your pictures on a password protected ftp server no one will know or care when you delete them. If you upload them on a publicly accessible website, despite what outdated laws on copyright say, you won't be able to withdraw them and that's a feature. Facebook is a monstrosity that pretends to be a password protected server but leaks your data by design. Do not try to equate someone unpublishing a work after they wrote, uploaded and publicized it with someone removing a drunken status update that should have never been public in the first place.
- baby 9y agoof course, but you shouldn't be stopped by people who want to backup your content at all cost against your will.
- gnode 9y agoI think this is more likely to be unintentional. As another comment mentioned, article.is isn't affected. If you want to remove things from the Internet Archive, you can do so using your robots.txt: https://archive.org/about/faqs.php#14 https://archive.org/about/faqs.php#14 https://www.fightcyberstalking.org/how-to-block-your-website-from-the-wayback-machine/ https://www.fightcyberstalking.org/how-to-block-your-website...
- johanj 9y agorobots.txt is really only supposed to be used for blocking the Internet Archives first snapshot, and not to remove existing snapshots – and even this might not be the case in the future as they try to preserve most snapshots. They made a few policy changes last year[1] to how they handle robots.txt files, to handle cases where a domain is sold and a new robots.txt file would result in deleting old data among other things. [1]: https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/17/robots-txt-meant-for-search-engines-dont-work-well-for-web-archives/ https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/17/robots-txt-meant-for-sea...
- gnode 9y agoInteresting. I wasn't aware that it no longer applies retroactively. Even so, medium.com's robots.txt still doesn't try to block new crawling by the Internet Archiver: https://medium.com/robots.txt https://medium.com/robots.txt Or via WBM for posterity: https://web.archive.org/web/20180430183503/https://medium.com/robots.txt https://web.archive.org/web/20180430183503/https://medium.co... It seems unlikely to me that they would deliberately go to this length to prevent archival, yet not attempt to prevent it happening to begin with. Furthermore, as mentioned in your link, they still accept removal requests via email.
- jrochkind1 9y agoHmm, that may be what it's meant for, but pretty sure it can currently be used to block things retroactively too. IA may still have it in the archive, but won't let viewers view it. As happened in this case: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16919017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16919017 No? The article you linked says they've stopped paying attention to robots.txt for US government and military sites, but it looks like it still retroactively removes visibility for everything else. I guess IA could change their practices. If medium or people like them start actively using robots.txt to try to retroactively remove things from visibility in the archive, perhaps IA will change their practices/policy. I would welcome it.
- spechide 9y agoJust use Telegram Instant View.
- paulie_a 9y agoMedium generally prevents people from reading articles anyways due to their insanely shitty UI. I generally avoid that site now
- tenryuu 9y agoUhh, is the first medium article not meant to be loading? worked fine for me, but I read it as it was meant to redirect to the homepage. If I did read it wrong, I was able to load the second one fine as well
- tinus_hn 9y agoAlternatively, they can just tell the Wayback Machine to delete the articles or forbid it from archiving them, right?
- dorian-graph 9y agoOver the last year I've come to trust effectively nothing on the internet. I've had so many Spotify playlists I was following disappear, whole artists, websites, articles, etc. I'm slowly moving to offline-first versions of all the information I care about. Edit: This change too also lends to the 'slow web' (or just slow $whatever) movement, which I'm a fan of.
- amelius 9y agoThe problem is, it's getting harder every day to find DRM-free content. For audio, CDs are getting out of fashion, and piracy channels lack the seeders because everybody is on Spotify.
- dorian-graph 9y agoYup, it's becoming a sad state to be able to own things and not be dependent upon the whims of others. I went from buying all my music (physical and digital copies), and sometimes had to remove DRM from the digital copies, to stopping that and just using Spotify. I'm slowly planning to stop paying for Spotify, but it would be very expensive to buy all the music I listen to. I think this will lead to at least 2 things (that used to be true, for me). 1) I'll listen to more local/new music that I can buy from BandCamp, etc. and 2) I'll have higher value to the music I do listen to, because I'm not as worried about glutting myself on a million new bands through Spotify. I'm okay with these 2 things.
- amelius 9y agoI used to save tracks by recording them through the "analog hole", using the following commandline in Linux: parec | sox -t raw -r 44100 -Lb 16 -c 2 -e signed-integer - -t wav raw.wav It still requires a lot of manual work, such as cutting the tracks, and making sure there are no "skips" (which somehow can happen). Skips could theoretically be removed using a consensus algorithm (using multiple recordings). I just wish someone would develop a fully automated workflow for converting playlists to audio files.
- jrochkind1 9y agoHmm, all they got to do is have a dynamic robots.txt that forbids wayback from the deleted articles, and they'll remove the workaround even. yes?
- sp332 9y agoSure, but they'd have to create a list of every deleted article which seems like it would be pretty long.
- jrochkind1 9y agoI assume their software is quite capable of automatically creating such a list to include in robots.txt, automatically generated.
- Exuma 9y agoOnce it's stored I imagine they don't need to even scrape the page again, so robots.txt wouldn't do anything.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- dragonwriter 9y agoInternet archive does rescrape periodically, and it removes archived pages based on the current robots.txt. This behavior is documented behavior of the archive that goes beyond the normal conventions of robots.txt.
- LinuxBender 9y agoI would add, the content itself is not removed. They only stop displaying it whilst the robots.txt says not to. If they can not reach your robots.txt, the content comes back as I have experienced multiple times.
- dahart 9y ago> So it looks like Medium has embedded a method to frustrate the casual user of Wayback Machine from seeing articles that their authors have removed from the original site. It strikes me as less likely that Medium is doing something intentional to prevent reading deleted articles, and more likely that the author of this post is making assumptions. Besides, archive.org has a policy of respecting copyright. All you have to do is ask them to not re-publish, and they will. No need to engineer wacky redirects that don’t work anyway. http://archive.org/about/faqs.php#20 http://archive.org/about/faqs.php#20
- coldacid 9y agoThis is why I like archive.is, it tends to avoid falling for any of that kind of BS. Something gets archived and it's there forever.
- textmode 9y agoIs a certain browser required to reproduce the problem? I had no trouble accessing the archived page. https://web.archive.org/web/20160826003417/https://medium.com/@Svenskunganka/interviewing-my-mother-a-mainframe-cobol-programmer-c693d40d88f7 https://web.archive.org/web/20160826003417/https://medium.co... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Interviewing my mother, a mainframe COBOL programmer My 1 year older brother (to the left), my mother and me (to the right) My mother has been working for one of the largest banks in the EU since before I was born and I've always been fascinated by her line of work, especially these last years since I've become a programmer myself. I've been asked to interview her plenty of times, and finally decided to do so. * * *