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> I’m also a prolific screenshotter. The internet is an ephemeral place, so when I see something online for a story, I make sure to capture it immediately. Why

> I’m also a prolific screenshotter. The internet is an ephemeral place, so when I see something online for a story, I make sure to capture it immediately. Why are screenshots seen as the gold standard for documenting deleted content? They are easily faked.

new299 8y ago
I’ve searched for web archival services before, but never found anything outside of some expensive legal services. It would be great if there was a service like the waybackmachine but which could be use to archive on demand, and make those archives publicly available. The internet archive is great for this, but they also respect robots.txt and don’t guarantee that they’ll archive pages you request.
- geggam 8y ago
  Just post some terrorist stuff on there and the NSA will do that for you
- Klathmon 8y ago
  I know blockchain is a dirty word around here, but this is absolutely an application that can use something like Bitcoin to store hashes of a site on a specific date, giving you the closest thing you can get to "proof" that the site existed on that date with that specific content. Then you don't need "secure" storage of the actual archives, you can have as many copies as possible with as many people as possible and not worry about someone tampering with the archives.
  - elwell 8y ago
    https://github.com/ramyhardan/proof-of-existence/blob/master/contracts/ProofOfExistence.sol https://github.com/ramyhardan/proof-of-existence/blob/master...
- matt4077 8y ago
  archive.org actually has a form for "archive it now", right there on https://archive.org/web/ https://archive.org/web/. They also address using their data in court proceedings in the FAQ. So I think they do have that use case in mind. Of course they'd be stupid to offer any guarantees without payment. That's what their service https://archive-it.org https://archive-it.org is for. Only for organisations, unfortunately. In regard to respecting robots.txt: I would consider any organisation running a bot and not respecting robots.txt as somewhat shady. ignoring it could even have consequences for admissibility in court.
- pabs3 8y ago
  There are at least 3 locations for on-demand web archiving: https://web.archive.org/save/https://news.ycombinator.com/ https://web.archive.org/save/https://news.ycombinator.com/ https://archive.is/ https://archive.is/ https://webrecorder.io/ https://webrecorder.io/ Probably some of the other sites supported by this extension have on-demand archiving too: https://github.com/dessant/view-page-archive https://github.com/dessant/view-page-archive For archiving on your own computer, this LWN article is pretty interesting: https://lwn.net/Articles/766374/ https://lwn.net/Articles/766374/
  - new299 8y ago
    Thanks, webrecorder.io looks particularly good. I’d also forgotten about archive.is I should use that more.
- mkj 8y ago
  There's https://tlsnotary.org/ https://tlsnotary.org/ which uses the site's own SSL signature to sign the session. No blockchain required!
exithrowaway564 8y ago
Lack of better options, where easy and fast are criteria.
blotter_paper 8y ago
You're totally correct. But if you just want to document something for your own future review, screenshots work fine. The thing is, journalism sees itself as being above citations. Journalists are primarily relying on their reputations as journalists, not evidence; the word of a journalist is supposed to be evidence, valid as a citation elsewhere. Journalists don't even record all of their interviews, a lot of them just get jotted down on paper and pieced together later. When they do record interviews, they don't include ways for the public to independently review those recordings to make sure that the written word corresponds 1:1 with what was spoken. You're supposed to trust them, even though we have plenty of examples of journalists who lied or just got sloppy. The profession needs a serious makeover. Historians used to be viewed this way, too. I'm forgetting the details, but there was an historian in the late 1800s who was actually criticised for meticulously citing his sources rather than relying on his reputation as an historian and letting historians of the future decide the merit of his work based on that.
- stinkytaco 8y ago
  Journalism is also not peer-review. It should never be viewed as such. Anonymous sources, the tendency for people to shy away from being recorded and just the speed of the news preclude some of what you are talking about. That said, I agree that journalists should be held to account. One of the victims of the decline of print media are local news outlets who are checking each other. I've noticed a trend in my own local paper to view themselves as above reproach, the singular check on all that is evil, but not likely to correct their own mistakes. Perhaps some of what you are talking about could check that.
  - blotter_paper 8y ago
    Yeah, I totally understand and agree with your reservations. I do think there should be an outlet for Deep Throat situations (as in Mark Felt, not Linda Lovelace). But if a journalist is claiming that something was said by a named source, there should be evidence of that in the vast majority of situations. If a journalist claims something was posted on the surface web, there should be independent archives that back the claim up.
- 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ceejayoz 8y ago
I suspect it's less "this is proof" and more "I won't remember the exact wording if that gets deleted".
lj3 8y ago
Everything can be easily faked. So what? Screenshots have the benefit of being easy to capture, store and share. Websites are very unreliable in this regard. They can be edited on the fly, are hard to store and are even easier to fake. Any archive or caching site can be purged of captured content. It's much harder to suppress an image once it's been passed around.

new299 8y ago

I’ve searched for web archival services before, but never found anything outside of some expensive legal services. It would be great if there was a service like the waybackmachine but which could be use to archive on demand, and make those archives publicly available. The internet archive is great for this, but they also respect robots.txt and don’t guarantee that they’ll archive pages you request.

geggam 8y ago
Just post some terrorist stuff on there and the NSA will do that for you
Klathmon 8y ago
I know blockchain is a dirty word around here, but this is absolutely an application that can use something like Bitcoin to store hashes of a site on a specific date, giving you the closest thing you can get to "proof" that the site existed on that date with that specific content. Then you don't need "secure" storage of the actual archives, you can have as many copies as possible with as many people as possible and not worry about someone tampering with the archives.
- elwell 8y ago
  https://github.com/ramyhardan/proof-of-existence/blob/master/contracts/ProofOfExistence.sol https://github.com/ramyhardan/proof-of-existence/blob/master...
matt4077 8y ago
archive.org actually has a form for "archive it now", right there on https://archive.org/web/ https://archive.org/web/. They also address using their data in court proceedings in the FAQ. So I think they do have that use case in mind. Of course they'd be stupid to offer any guarantees without payment. That's what their service https://archive-it.org https://archive-it.org is for. Only for organisations, unfortunately. In regard to respecting robots.txt: I would consider any organisation running a bot and not respecting robots.txt as somewhat shady. ignoring it could even have consequences for admissibility in court.
pabs3 8y ago
There are at least 3 locations for on-demand web archiving: https://web.archive.org/save/https://news.ycombinator.com/ https://web.archive.org/save/https://news.ycombinator.com/ https://archive.is/ https://archive.is/ https://webrecorder.io/ https://webrecorder.io/ Probably some of the other sites supported by this extension have on-demand archiving too: https://github.com/dessant/view-page-archive https://github.com/dessant/view-page-archive For archiving on your own computer, this LWN article is pretty interesting: https://lwn.net/Articles/766374/ https://lwn.net/Articles/766374/
- new299 8y ago
  Thanks, webrecorder.io looks particularly good. I’d also forgotten about archive.is I should use that more.
mkj 8y ago
There's https://tlsnotary.org/ https://tlsnotary.org/ which uses the site's own SSL signature to sign the session. No blockchain required!

exithrowaway564 8y ago

Lack of better options, where easy and fast are criteria.

blotter_paper 8y ago

You're totally correct. But if you just want to document something for your own future review, screenshots work fine. The thing is, journalism sees itself as being above citations. Journalists are primarily relying on their reputations as journalists, not evidence; the word of a journalist is supposed to be evidence, valid as a citation elsewhere. Journalists don't even record all of their interviews, a lot of them just get jotted down on paper and pieced together later. When they do record interviews, they don't include ways for the public to independently review those recordings to make sure that the written word corresponds 1:1 with what was spoken. You're supposed to trust them, even though we have plenty of examples of journalists who lied or just got sloppy. The profession needs a serious makeover. Historians used to be viewed this way, too. I'm forgetting the details, but there was an historian in the late 1800s who was actually criticised for meticulously citing his sources rather than relying on his reputation as an historian and letting historians of the future decide the merit of his work based on that.

stinkytaco 8y ago
Journalism is also not peer-review. It should never be viewed as such. Anonymous sources, the tendency for people to shy away from being recorded and just the speed of the news preclude some of what you are talking about. That said, I agree that journalists should be held to account. One of the victims of the decline of print media are local news outlets who are checking each other. I've noticed a trend in my own local paper to view themselves as above reproach, the singular check on all that is evil, but not likely to correct their own mistakes. Perhaps some of what you are talking about could check that.
- blotter_paper 8y ago
  Yeah, I totally understand and agree with your reservations. I do think there should be an outlet for Deep Throat situations (as in Mark Felt, not Linda Lovelace). But if a journalist is claiming that something was said by a named source, there should be evidence of that in the vast majority of situations. If a journalist claims something was posted on the surface web, there should be independent archives that back the claim up.
8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

ceejayoz 8y ago

I suspect it's less "this is proof" and more "I won't remember the exact wording if that gets deleted".

lj3 8y ago

Everything can be easily faked. So what? Screenshots have the benefit of being easy to capture, store and share. Websites are very unreliable in this regard. They can be edited on the fly, are hard to store and are even easier to fake. Any archive or caching site can be purged of captured content. It's much harder to suppress an image once it's been passed around.