20 ms·
Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14
- Diagon 7y agoExtensive history is about to be lost. Despite being broken, many organizations still use it. Examples from that post: A police cooperative in Washington DC that was using them as a network to communicate with their respective neighborhoods with over 17,000 members. A phone company in the UK that assigns phone numbers using the groups and now will lose all those phone designations when it’s deleted. A Birding group in new Delhi with 2,000 members that has collected data and research on birds for TWO DECADES. An Adoption group in France, that has been using it for years and years to communicate and share history and photos and more. They also would have found: Numerous support groups for people who are suicidal or depressed. Numerous medical groups for people to communicate more effectively with their doctors. Numerous Vet groups with 24 hr care advice for sick pets. Numerous support and help groups for the Elderly. Numerous Historical groups for WW2 Veterans, Vietnam Veterans, and etc. Numerous science groups that have used them for years and have all their research there. Numerous fan fiction groups or arts groups that have shared their work for years.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- tedunangst 7y ago> A phone company in the UK that assigns phone numbers using the groups and now will lose all those phone designations when it’s deleted. Wow, somebody invented a database that's even worse than an Excel file on a network share. (Also, how are they going to assign new numbers when archive.org takes over? Is archive.org going to give them write access?)
- mtmail 7y ago“My understanding is that [the group] will still function as a mailing list, which is for all practical purposes, what people use this as,” https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/17/20919630/yahoo-groups-uk-ofcom-simwood-numbers https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/17/20919630/yahoo-groups-uk...
- Diagon 7y agoThat's right, but (our main concern) is that the archives are being deleted. With no further history being recorded, it's utility for some purposes is limited. I have also come across some complaints that even as a list-serve it can be problematic. Posts, for example, are no longer coming in order.
- Alex3917 7y agoBut as a mailing list, each subscriber has the entire archive, at least from the date they joined. And any one of them can make it publicly accessible at any point in the future. In practice it will undoubtedly result in the destruction of enormous amounts of human knowledge, but at least in theory not much is getting immediately lost.
- philpem 7y agoThe difficulty in a lot of cases is finding someone who has a complete copy of the group. Yahoo Groups also had file, photo and database features, and archives of those are likely to be incomplete. You'd have to go through the member list (primarily early members) and find someone who still had a copy of all the messages. The other problem is making it available - I ran a Yahoo group for many years, and have Mbox and Maildir format archives. I'm still looking for a decent web-based browser for these. HyperKitty (Mailman's archive browser) came close, but seems to require most of Mailman to be installed in order to work. In my case, I managed to archive a bunch of groups related to amateur radio -- and I will be placing these on archive.org as soon as I have a spare moment to zip them up. A difficult-to-access archive is better than no archive at all, the important part is getting the data into a safe place.
- Diagon 7y agoI have the same problem. I used some old script back in 2006 to download a couple of groups in ... I think it's Mbox format. It's just not clear what to do with it.
- 7y ago
- ec109685 7y agoNot to be flippant, but wouldn't one of the members of these groups have a copy of the group in their email? Given gmail and whatnot store things virtually indefinitely, couldn't the contents be recovered that way? -EJ
- Diagon 7y agoSome of these groups are decades old. For them, you'd be hard pressed to find someone who was there for the whole history of the group and kept them all. Also, yahoo was often a headache, dropping emails to individuals - you'd have to go to the website to read them. And furthermore, there is a lot more than emails stored on the platform: files/images/links/calendars/databases ... To add to all this, it's not an individual project. Most people done' have technical competence. They need someone to help. That's what the Archive Team has been trying to offer (if not for Verizon).
- betamaxthetape 7y agodisclaimer: I'm a Member of Archive Team who's helping coordinate the joining of Yahoo Groups in preparation for archival. Yahoo's banning of a large amount of the accounts we were using is a huge setback for us. In total we lost over access to over 55,000 Yahoo Groups, many of these will now not be archived and will be lost when Yahoo deletes everything on December 14. Particularly disastrous was the loss of access to all of the 30,000 Fandom (fanfic / fanart / etc..) groups that were requested to be archived by members of the fandom community. We're back to square one now, and it is looking increasingly likely that we're only going to be able to re-join (and therefore archive) a small percentage of these groups before December 14. (And now for the inevitable, shameless plug...) We could really use some help! If you've got an hour or so, we could really use people to come and complete CAPTCHAs for us. (A CAPTCHA is needed to join every group). Instructions at: https://github.com/davidferguson/yahoogroups-joiner https://github.com/davidferguson/yahoogroups-joiner
- mehhh 7y agoHave you considered using NordVPN for CAPTCHA bypass? They are a shady company, but their network of residential VPNs is impressive.
- scarejunba 7y agoI imagine you guys already know this but considering we’re up against the timeline, I’d use the captcha solving service (easy to google yourself) and Luminati to distribute the IP addresses while swallowing my ethical qualms.
- StavrosK 7y agoI would donate my IP/bandwidth to archive.org if I could run a scraper easily.
- ignoranceprior 7y agoYou can install ArchiveTeam Warrior: https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=ArchiveTeam_Warrior https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=ArchiveTeam_Warr...
- gumby 7y agoWhat is Verizon’s motivation for taking steps to prevent it?
- jedberg 7y agoCost savings, plain and simple. Less bandwidth, fewer servers.
- dbtx 7y agoThat only explains a decision to take them down ITFP. What can be gained by shredding all that information? Maybe they aren't shredding it. Maybe they just want no publically available copies to exist.
- colejohnson66 7y agoLess disk space being used maybe?
- jedberg 7y agoIt explains both. Blocking archiving will save a bunch of bandwidth as well as not having to scale up the servers for the load of dealing with the archiving.
- Diagon 7y agoYes. The archiving was starting to take a lot of bandwidth. Some care had to be taken not to bog down Yahoo's servers.
- dbtx 7y agoI'll give you that. I wasn't thinking of a load spike, just that of the perpetually continued service. But it doesn't excuse much. Capt. Obvious says, "it's temporary, it could have been anticipated, 'protecting' their datacenters from the load in exactly this way will almost certainly be interpreted as ill will, there are options not being taken such as throttling or even voluntarily sending it all to archive.org"
- dessant 7y agoWhat prevents Verizon from donating the Yahoo Groups database to the Internet Archive? What does Verizon have to gain from preventing the archival of Yahoo Groups?
- tcd 7y agoI can imagine it's easier and safer (from a legal perspective) to just delete the data and therefore no longer be responsible for the content. Twitter wants to delete older Twitter accounts because they're required to by law under the GDPR. I mean, the GDPR makes things kind of difficult in this regard, and I suspect even archives are liable if somebody takes an issue with content they are hosting.
- Alex3917 7y agoThat doesn’t sound correct, given they GDPR doesn’t generally apply to archival products.
- piokoch 7y agoWhy not? According to GDPR someone can show up and request (1) fixing personal data (PII) like nickname - this is data accuracy requirement, in fact, according to GDPR Yahoo should do the data accuracy check (for instance send a reminder to the user to check data). (2) Someone can file data portability request, Yahoo needs to provide this. (3) Some can request data removal. (4) Yahoo has to managed user consents for anything they do with those data. For a product that does not bring any revenue or significant revenue, it is better to dump everything and simply don't be associated with data any longer. That's the side effect of GDPR, it is hard from the technical and financial perspective to maintain anything free on the Internet that keeps user's data.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- gnud 7y agoGDPR has an actual archive exception to the "right to be forgotten", art. 17, §3d [0]. IANAL, so I don't want to say if it covers this archival, but I would hope so. 0: https://gdpr-info.eu/art-17-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-17-gdpr/
- jedberg 7y agoIt's like the burning of the Library of Alexandria all over again. We don't know exactly what was in the library when it burned. We assume it was all great works of intellectualism, but it could very well have been the fanfics of their time.
- Waterluvian 7y agoYahoo Answers is an invaluable trove of insight into an intellectual class of people that I think a lot of us regularly forget exist.
- therein 7y agoIt is an absolute trove of insight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EShUeudtaFg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EShUeudtaFg
- userbinator 7y agoBefore clicking that link I guessed at what it would be, and I was wrong but not far (I was expecting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll-lia-FEIY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll-lia-FEIY )
- OnlineGladiator 7y agoWe must never forget Ken M. https://gizmodo.com/ken-m-is-the-most-epic-troll-on-the-internet-1739028329 https://gizmodo.com/ken-m-is-the-most-epic-troll-on-the-inte...
- cyberpunk 7y agohttps://i.redd.it/yv9k5nes87rz.jpg https://i.redd.it/yv9k5nes87rz.jpg Not sure why this one kills me so much...
- narrator 7y agoI think one of the unintended consequences of privacy legislation is it will support the burning the library of Alexandria over and over again. The default corporate posture will be : Delete all the data! It's a liability and figuring out what we can keep is an enormous headache.
- pmoriarty 7y agoThere have to be some Verizon or Yahoo employees on HN who are reading this. Can any of you shed some light on why Verizon and Yahoo aren't cooperating with the Archive Team to archive this valuable historical content? (If you don't feel comfortable commenting with your regular HN account, maybe you could do so with a throwaway account?) Also, is it possible for any of you to bring this issue to the attention of upper management and help them understand how important it is to archive this? You Verizon/Yahoo employees have much more power to make a difference here than anyone of us from the outside can.
- logicallee 7y agohow much storage do you think in total all of the Yahoo Groups content takes?
- geggam 7y agoOver 4 petabytes 8 years ago
- logicallee 7y agoOh.
- bflesch 7y agoI'd love to have this as a torrent
- logicallee 7y agoyou have 4,000 terabytes of storage space and bandwidth to torrent? (I'll be honest, I had to look up how many terabytes a petabyte is.)
- sgeisler 7y agoIt's actually not totally insane anymore. If you could afford a Tesla Roadster you can build yourself a 4PB storage solution. With some high density top loading storage servers (4HE for 90 HDDs), 6TB HDDs and some SSDs thrown in for caching you can build that in 36HE for less than 300k$ (not counting time needed to assemble and configure). So if that's your hobby, go ahead :D If one takes more than 5 minutes to research this I'm pretty sure that it's possible to push that number below 250k$.
- userbinator 7y agoThe "dark side" of web scrapers has always been one step ahead with things like IP bans and CAPTCHA solvers, maybe it's time to get their assistance... as the old saying goes, "an enemy of an enemy is a friend".
- PopeRigby 7y agoWho are the dark side of web scrapers?
- userbinator 7y agoThe shady SEO people (including the social media account farmers) and the spammers, who seem to always find a way around everything that's put in place against them.
- 55555 7y agoPeople who personally have 100,000 Yahoo accounts because they made them back when you could just pretend to be blind and request the captcha in spoken form, and then fed it into Google's speech to text engine, fed it back in to Yahoo, made the accounts, and who also have a botnet of a million residential IPs and can spin up a bunch of servers to run some scrapers.
- ddmma 7y agoNSA might have a copy just for your concern
- crazypython 7y agoLet's collectively DDoS attack Verizon and Yahoo.
- empath75 7y agoWhen I was at aol I tried to get them to open source the q link server code from the 1980s. Someone actually got it on DVD for me and everything but after the Verizon merger they fired the entire legal team that was responsible for authorizing open source release and it just stalled.
- tempestn 7y agoOpen sourcing code can be tricky—there's quite a bit of review that needs to go into doing it right, as well as more work if you want the release to actually be reasonably useful. Blocking this archiving effort is on a whole other level. We're talking about saving information that was already public. All they have to do to allow this to happen is... nothing. I can't comprehend why Verizon/Yahoo would go out of their way to block these efforts.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- unethical_ban 7y agoIt depends on the size of the codebase and how shitty your programmers are, but if you aren't greedy or scared of over-litigation, it isn't hard at all. I have written great contributions to a python API library that could be of benefit to the community around it. The code has nothing to do with my company's core competency, and the code is used for internal orchestration, so "exposing insecure code" is an unlikely concern. It is easier for a lawyer, especially a luddite, to say "no" than to help their employees give back to the world.
- johannes1234321 7y agoFor new code it is indeed "simple". Old code however likely contains third party provided code, be it from libraries or code provided by contractors, where no (clear) license permitting relicensing of the source is available. This can be quite complex historic work as version history might not exist (which code come from where?) and documentation is limited (paper contracts lost in archives) and so on.
- tcd 7y agoAnd this is the dangers of relying on a private, corporate, for-profit law-bound organization. They're susceptible to abiding by the laws and of course, there is a cost attached to all of this. Exploiting a free resource, as we all do these days (reddit, youtube, facebook, hackernews itself etc) is all well and good but maintaining history is expensive (content needs moderating, you are required to abide by the GDPR and DMCA, there may be disputes about content on the platform). I mean, Google+, MySpace, Bebo, IMDB comments is now dead and gone, how useful was the data really? I'm sure some people might go to archives but I would imagine 95% of the data is just "rot" that has no value or substance. History is lost all the time, we barely know what we've been up to the last few thousand years only now can we so extensively document our world with the precision and quality afforded to us. But in the end, time moves on and some of that history is lost, it hurts, but whose to say any archived history will be preserved anyhow? We're still relying on our storage technology being readable years/decades/centuries from now, which is not a given.
- Diagon 7y agoWhile I agree with your first point, and tried to get groups I was associated with to move for years, nevertheless there are groups there that engaged in community driven research and have important data uploaded there. (This is my main concern, though other groups were focused on different issues - uploaded art, for example.) So I think while we need to educate people about not using centralized providers like Yahoo and Google, right now we need to focus on getting someone at Verizon/Yahoo to respond to this urgent situation.
- BlueTemplar 7y agoProtocols, not Platforms ! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20841059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20841059
- Diagon 7y agoI totally agree. Google? FB? Twitter? How about the Friendiverse? :)
- shrubble 7y agoI wonder if a small scraper script that an existing member of the group could download and run under their existing, valid account, would work? Like a TCL language 'starpack' , a single binary Go program or something else? Can you script a browser to do some crawling for you?
- y4mi 7y agoLike.... Selenium or puppeteer?
- Diagon 7y agoThere's way too much data. Many group owners did not know of the shutdown (Yahoo was negligent regarding informing owners), and even if they did many group owners have little or no technical capability. That's why so many requested of the Archive Team that their groups be archived.
- shrubble 7y ago1000 members of a group each downloading 20 messages every 4 hours (a dribble that wouldn't be noticed) can pull down ... 20k messages in 4 hours.
- mulmen 7y agoIs that enough? What about groups with only a few members? Or members that have passed away in the last 20 years? Will those WWII vet groups have 1000 responsive members with the technical skill to run an archive script in the next week?
- lucb1e 7y agoThat's exactly what they're doing, and then they get CAPTCHAs and accounts banned.
- umeshunni 7y agoI'm confused why Archive.org is attempting to archive and expose to the public what is essentially private communications? My usage of Yahoo groups in the early 2000s was mostly to communicate with my high school / college / dorm groups and the last thing I want is for embarrassing messages from 20 years ago sent to a private group to be archived.
- saagarjha 7y agoYahoo Groups can be configured to allow public access.
- Diagon 7y agoMany groups are public. Many have owners that requested the group be archived.
- rahuldottech 7y agoThey are only archiving data on publicly accessible groups - many of which contain lots of discussions worth archiving.
- betamaxthetape 7y agoClarification - we're not archive.org. Archive Team and Internet Archive are completely separate. And we're only archiving things that "any guy on the internet" can see. If someone can access the messages simply by joining a group (with no moderator approval), I'd argue it's fair game. We're not going to be unreasonable, though. If something private slips through and we receive a takedown request from the author, we typically remove it.
- raverbashing 7y agoI find it curious that at the same time we discuss the 'right to be forgotten' laws there's also the opposite problem of preventing the internet from forgetting something.
- userbinator 7y agoThat's why I'm not a fan of those laws --- in addition to the fact that in practice they turn into something more like "right to rewrite history".
- coldpie 7y agoYes! They're both really interesting problems and there's no right answer! You're right to be curious, it's a fascinating set of issues.
- dependenttypes 7y ago'right to be forgotten' laws are the result of the whole "numbers have owners" insanity, combined with the fact that the average person will mindlessly use random services to store private data.
- qxnqd 7y agoWhy does everything need to be archived? Why can't the stupid things I said 20 years ago in a forum just vanish someday? (I never posted there but you get my point)
- Diagon 7y agoIt's not stupid. There were serious groups using that platform. While I never thought it was a good idea, they nevertheless did. My personal concern is community driven medical/biohacking research groups that go back to at least the late 1990's.
- dependenttypes 7y ago> Why can't the stupid things I said 20 years ago in a forum just vanish someday? Because some might want to read them or use them in some form.
- dbtx 7y agoThe one group I ever joined held plenty of useful/unique SysEx dumps containing custom patches for a popular 80's music synthesizer, among related things. I wonder who has already backed it up, and if I should. edit: Oops, I'm also a member of LTspice. D'oh! The best way to stop being ashamed of stupid things that you said forever ago is not to cast those things into the Memory Hole, but to stop saying those things, and most importantly, stop being the person who would. Then you know it's in the past, and it doesn't matter who else remembers. I'll let you know how that goes, someday ;)
- no_identd 7y agoDo it.
- paggle 7y agoI am a self interested party, but I’m personally glad since there’s a post in a Yahoo Group that’s findable through Google, that would absolutely ruin my reputation and life if discovered.
- Diagon 7y agoIndividuals have always been able to delete their own posts. If you log in there, you can still do it (before the 14th). Also, see betamaxthetape, above. If anything is archived, they will respond to takedown requests.
- paggle 7y agoForgot the password to the account.
- Diagon 7y agoI see, yes. They have been negligent in many ways. Can you contact the owner of the group or a moderator and make the request? (We even have groups whose owners have been locked out. Who do you contact at yahoo?)
- paggle 7y agoI don’t want to draw any attention to the post. It’s made it ~15 years in silence so I don’t want to make a change of strategy.
- aspaceman 7y agoThey want to wipe their hands clean of it. They don't want a record of it.
- Diagon 7y agoIs this something you know from the inside, or your (probably good) guess?
- aspaceman 7y agoJust a guess to be clear. Not an employee myself. I would imagine there's a lot of porn, sex work, stuff Verizon is trying to wash its hands of lately with Tumblr. EDIT: Ah yes HN - where admitting that you're just speculating wildly like everyone else gets you the downvotes -_-
- jasonsamoa 7y agoweak speculation gets downvotes m8
- wolfgang42 7y agoSpeculating wildly is OK. Speculating wildly using definitive-sounding statements, particularly in a thread directed specifically towards employees of a company, is extremely misleading. If you had started with “Not related to Verizon in any way, but IMO...” that would have been perfectly fine, but given where and how you made the statements it looks remarkably like you were claiming inside knowledge of the situation, and then feigning innocence when called out.
- blotter_paper 7y agoFWIW, I read aspaceman's orginal post as speculation rather than an implicit claim of insider knowledge. I do see how it could be taken the other way.
- murxmaster 7y agoSuch a pity we lost gmane.org. Lots of knowledge gets lost these days.
- Thorentis 7y agoI'm genuinely curious from an ideological perspective, why archivists think all this material is worth saving? People often compare the shutting down of sites or the banning of content (e.g. When Tumblr banned porn, or now yahoo shutting down groups) to the burning of the Library of Alexandria. But there is a huge difference. The LoA held knowledge collated and collected by the best thinkers of the time. The Internet is not that. The Internet is an open platform where anybody can say anything like that. Most comment sections are filled with all sorts of material ranging from factual to entirely fictional. I realise it is hard to decide what is worth keeping (and therefore erring on the side of saving it all), but I'd wager that the vast majority of archived content is not useful at all. The Wayback machine is a perfect example. Lots of great stuff, but that's a drop in the bucket compared to the vast amounts of useless, or even redundant information stored. It is a lot of resources thrown at saving, not the equivalent of the Library of Alexandria, but the public toilet block graffiti wall. Anybody want to share what drives them to do this?
- Diagon 7y agoSee below. My main concern is early medical/biohacking groups that shared data, like medical tests, and engaged in extensive discussion/community driven research. Such groups go back to at least the late 1990's. A main concern of the Archive Group (again, below) is art that was uploaded there. I'm sure those are not the only two classes of examples. See for example the bird watching group in Delhi that has been collecting data for decades. (In the link of the OP.)
- Nition 7y agoStep 1: We only need to archive the genuinely good content. Step 2: It will take a long time to look through all this content and determine which parts deserve keeping. Step 3: We will inevitably leave out something that someone else thinks is worth keeping anyway. Step 4: Let's just archive everything.
- estranhosidade 7y agoIt's basically that. Yes, when saving everything we'll save a lot of trash and utterly garbage, spam and all that shit... But the things we would be risking to lose if we didn't save everything, they are and will be so much important. To save what is really important, you have to save everything.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jariel 7y agoWhy doesn't V/Y offer to provide some 'meta retrieval archive service' for some amount o $? I mean, $ is what they care about so ...
- jijji 7y agowhat a PR mess for verizon
- fortran77 7y agoNot really. Few people today care about Yahoo Groups, and I suspect many people wish old posts they made to the Internet would just "disappear."
- Diagon 7y agoIf you read here you will see that there are many active groups. Even of those that aren't active, some have important history, even scientific value. As for old posts disappearing, individuals have always been able to go to Yahoo Groups and delete posts that they later thought the better of. Group owners can also delete posts.
- lazzlazzlazz 7y agoThis is a wake-up call to the entire world: we cannot take internet history for granted. We need affordable, decentralized means with long-term economic incentives to archive the digital world. In a way, the digital world is far more fragile than the physical world. And the time to solve this is now.
- 8bitsrule 7y agoTragedy of The Cloud. IIRC, Archive.org is still running its fundraiser today. We need LOTS of publicly-sponsored and paid-for digital archival centers that, like libraries, are maintained for the common welfare. Or we could, you know, add that duty (and funding) to existing libraries! With -paid- archivists!
- BlueTemplar 7y agoYeah, aren't there archiving obligations like that for at least books and movies?
- Dolores12 7y agoRecently Verizon have blocked all of my yahoo accounts. I've spent some time trying to find any kind of support form to get them restored with no luck. To get support you need pay money now. Perhaps, Archive.org accounts fell under the same ban.
- betamaxthetape 7y agoVerizon has stated in support emails that they were aware of Archive Team's efforts and specifically will not be un-banning our accounts.[0] I therefore think it likely that the banning was targeted. [0] https://modsandmembersblog.wordpress.com/2019/12/08/verizon-yahoo-bad-form/ https://modsandmembersblog.wordpress.com/2019/12/08/verizon-...
- Diagon 7y agoWe have groups that the owners can't even access any more. They demand a yahoo email even when there's a non-Yahoo email associated with it. Y-Groups has been badly broken for some time.
- frustyycomb 7y agoyahoo is going to keep the messages but just delete the art and other uploads or attachments to the messages correct? although apparently they will make some groups private as well essentially closing access.
- lsiebert 7y agoNope, they are deleting everything
- D-Coder 7y agoAny recommendations for a good replacement site?
- Diagon 7y agoA lot of people are going to groups.io, but I certainly wouldn't want to suggest anyone move to another centralized system. The best thing to do is probably just to get a VPS and install phpBB or something. For group owners, importing our Yahoo archives there is going to be the next task.
- breakingcups 7y agoYeah, a PHPBB forum on a random VPS run by a random user has a much higher chance of surviving..
- Diagon 7y agoThe point is they then own their data. If they want to move it to archive.org or anyplace else, they can. Unlike the situation we find ourselves in now.
- frustyycomb 7y agothere are a few groups i was a member of like lifters https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Lifters/info https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Lifters/info which was an intensive technical development group in the field on propellerless, rocketless, jetless flight using only electronic high voltage. also some of the politics groups were a great time capuslue for around the clinton/bush election era a lo to f eartthquake researchers gathered on several earthquake groups as well including caltech seismologistics and advanced amatuers many of whom arent around anymore. also some of the info in these groups can be used to defeat patent applications as they show evidence of public prior concepts and art. yahoogroups consisted of somewhat more technically advanced users than modern website users like reddit etc because they were earlier and somewhat harder to use. its a lot of good quality content. also in the early days on these groups spam and massive controlled astroturfing account groups was pretty rare. this is like losing 15 years of ancient Sumerian writings in a very interesting early time for the Internet.
- gatherhunterer 7y agoThe current administration put Verizon’s chief counsel into the position of FCC Chairman. I would not expect Verizon to answer to anyone. Also, it is shame that the person in direct contact with Yahoo over this is sending angry emails in all caps. The Internet Archive deserves better.
- Diagon 7y agoI agree on the first point. The second is perhaps understandable if you read the whole exchange. You know they initially gave us 13 days before they cut off storing any more of the group emails (that is, new emails)? With an outcry, they increased that to 20. Many thousands of people were scrambling to find a new home. We are now reaching the end of the line (the last week) before the archives themselves are gone, and they have blocked the main concerted attempt to save some of that history. So, some level of frustration is in order.
- gatherhunterer 7y agoA lack of emotional control is usually understandable. But it suggests a lack of care and focus that does not befit an important effort. I learned years ago to never send and email or text or to make a call when angry. I always thank myself the next day when I am able to choose my words more tactfully. That email makes them look like a group of angry trolls.
- arianestrasse 7y agoI'm wholeheartedly supporting the archival effort but was wondering exactly the same thing about the person communicating with Verizone. Her argumentation comes off as quite immature, and she's not making much sense with all that rambling. Saying stuff such as this sounds pretentious and will unfortunately only get laughed at by anyone in the corporate world: "So the best thing Verizon could do, since they are just going to throw us all into the trash anyway, as we aren’t important to them, is let us get our archives any way we can. The terms of service really should not apply to people who have been told, we’re gonna delete you from existence. If it’s lawful for us to get them from you, in broken buggy and virus ridden state, it’s just as lawful for us to get them ourselves." As it is right now, she's just not doing any favors to the archivist community out there. Perhaps someone with proper communication skills and better nerves should take up that role? This is not a time to play a martyr and throw a fit while expecting Verizon to meet you half-way.
- ajnin 7y agoWhat was the original plan exactly ? Subscribe to as many groups as possible and then wait until the last moment to grab the data ? That would almost certainly have resulted in massive bandwidth problems and massive bans by Verizon in response at this point, failing the archival effort anyway.
- CriticalCathed 7y agoPlan was to organize it, then carefully and thoughtfully balance out the load so that it didn't put undue burden on their servers. The entire plan was orchestrated in this way so that it wouldn't cause problems.
- teovall 7y agoThe archiving scripts have been under development and testing since Yahoo first made their announcement. The plan was to get as much manual labor (volunteers solving CAPTCHAs to join groups) done while waiting for the scripts to be stable, reliable, and automatable.
- Dignium 7y agoIDK if this is any help, Verizon is holding their annual conference On Dec 10th (less 2 days away as of this writing), with C.E.O. Hans Vestberg presenting at 12:15 EST. https://www.verizon.com/about/investors/ubs-global-tmt-conference-2019 https://www.verizon.com/about/investors/ubs-global-tmt-confe... Maybe someone can pipe up at the conference.
- Diagon 7y agoDignium - is that an online conference? Do you need to own a share to get access? I'm having trouble making it out.
- Diagon 7y agoOk, so it's a webcast and it LL we can join it through here: https://www.ubs.com/global/en/investment-bank/conferences/americas.html https://www.ubs.com/global/en/investment-bank/conferences/am... I'm not clear if we'll be able to give feedback, but I can try.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- lonelappde 7y agoThe lesson here isn't to run a hail Mary effort at the last day to save Yahoo Groups. The lesson here is to backup things you care about before they start to disappear. Is this stuff so important if not one of millions of users thought it was worth putting effort into saving? Yahoo's takeover/shutdown was announced years ago.
- Diagon 7y agoInertia. I'm connected with a series of groups and I tried to get people to move for years. It just doesn't seem anything happens except under pressure. Also, the scripts really have been developing during this last 2 months, which is all the time they gave us when they said they'd be deleting all content. Until then, I didn't see anything that would get me all content including files/links/calendars/databases.
- fred_is_fred 7y agoWhy wouldn't these groups for which Yahoo seems to be a critical service have done this work weeks ago? Either it's important and you make an effort yourself, or you do nothing, which clearly indicates that it is not important. I'm having a hard time getting worked into a lather over this one like it seems everyone else is - it's been announced for 2 months - ample time to save what you needed.
- perl4ever 7y ago‘There’s no point acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now.’
- jefftk 7y agoThis was on the front page here in October when it was announced: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21269614 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21269614
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y agoHow many non-technical readers are a) going to see that HN post, and b) have any idea what the gobbledygook in those first few posts means?
- jefftk 7y agoYahoo sent out email notifications to every group owner and member. I got mine on November 1st. Yahoo is definitely handling this badly: they should have offered an export tool, given a longer window, and been clearer in their messaging. But the claim that they didn't notify people (and just put the information up in a place no one would see) is wrong.
- 7y ago
- caymanjim 7y agoI don't see this as a big loss, and if I were someone who'd posted on Yahoo Groups, I'd be happy if it all disappeared. I don't consider this kind of content something that should be durable and everlasting. It's ephemeral conversation. If anything worth saving comes of conversation, it should be converted to another form and saved. I'm glad I'm old enough that most of what I wrote on message boards as a teenager and young adult disappeared long before archive.org and similar sites existed. Conversations shouldn't last forever.
- btashton 7y agoI'm part of an opensource project that has been around for a long time, the mailing lists (for good or bad) lived there for quite some time. There is a lot of design and troubleshooting history I would rather not be lost forever.
- okasaki 7y agoI wonder if they're actually deleting it, or just making it inaccessible to the public?
- PopeRigby 7y agoThey're most likely deleting it. There's not much point in them hosting all that data when it costs money to do so.
- paulcole 7y agoVerizon isn’t a charity. Why would they offer any assistance?
- johannes1234321 7y agoThis would fall under "marketing" from a accountant's perspective.
- notduncansmith 7y agoThen again, maybe they figure they’ll get more press coverage by being dicks about it than they would by being decent.
- johannes1234321 7y agoI guess it's more like they don't want to have their brand associated with "inappropriate" content. From my (European) perspective the bar American corporations use is weird, but seems plausible to me. Also I believe they come to it as a media corporation - access to content has to be restricted, so they can charge. If archive.org has too many texts/videos/... people don't watch their movie (not that it works that way ...)
- danShumway 7y agoThey're also not monetizing the content or doing anything with it. They're just going to throw it away. Why would they go out of their way to block archival attempts? This is the corporate equivalent of throwing your old computer into an empty ditch on the side of the road, and getting mad when someone responsible comes by to recycle it for you.
- nikanj 7y agoCorporate DNA in the US seems to be build around two basic principles: 1) Use whatever means to get yourself forward 2) Do whatever you can to hold everyone else back The Groups thing is a wonderful example of #2 in action. It’s not about preventing access to Groups in particular, just the general principle of preventing and hindering all and always
- drawkbox 7y agoThis is why the change in ownership to private equity of .ORG TLD is problematic. What if the owners, or owners after it is sold further down the line, of the .ORG TLD prevent archiving? Or charge more for that? That would greatly affect web archive.org and Wikipedia.org. This move on preventing archival actions is probably setup to allow them to block it later after the sale goes through and say that it was a policy before they started it. A bit like how they lifted .ORG pricing limits just before .ORG TLD was sold to Ethos Capital. .ORG TLD looks to be targeted right now.
- Diagon 7y agoWait. You're saying that the owners of the .org TLD could put restrictions on the use of those domain names? And something like "can't be used for archiving" is a legal possibility? I admit to legal ignorance, but this does seem over the top.
- crankylinuxuser 7y agoSo this is a serious question: Why in the hell weren't you using something more backupable, like IRC with a bot, or something like this? Given it's biohacking, and not some older-tech thing, you should have 100% known better. Why didn't you?
- yladiz 7y agoLikely having something more easily accessible to less technical people, plus being able to view the history of posts in the browser, are some reasons.
- ramraj07 7y ago"biohackers"... "Less technical people"
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y agoWhat is this supposed to mean? You can have an avid interest in one field and know nothing about others.
- EvanAnderson 7y agoTechnical people make poor choices about using hosted services and not having an appropriate backup, too. People are, by and large, short-sighted.
- EvanAnderson 7y agoThe OP isn't the person who created the groups he's discussing. He's part of the effort trying to archive the groups.
- Diagon 7y agoYes, it wasn't me who started the groups in mind, and these were quite early, starting in the late 90's. While many members were researchers, on the whole they were not in computer fields- chemistry, biology, medicine... On top of that, people of that vintage knew very little about the internet. There have also been many other comments here about other types of groups, from bird watchers to people building rockets to histories of WWII, that would certainly not have had this kind of technical background.
- fl0under 7y agoI had just recently been reading about Arweave [0], a sort of distributed file storage that claims to permanently store files/webpages using various incentives. Seems like something like this would be a good way to archive this sort of information or build sites like Yahoo groups on top of this file storage in the first place. [0] https://www.arweave.org/ https://www.arweave.org/
- kevingadd 7y agoStorage isn't really the problem in this case, collecting the data is the problem because yahoo/verizon are actively hostile.
- companyhen 7y agoArweave is doing great stuff but I think it'd still run into a similar situation as archive.org -- Check out the arweave discord dev community if you haven't though!
- oieoeireoes 7y agoVerizon claimed that the archivists violated the "terms of service" [1], but I couldn't find any reference to automation, downloading, crawling, or denial of service attacks that might apply. Does anyone have an idea of exactly what term or terms were violated by the archivists? [1] https://www.verizonmedia.com/policies/us/en/verizonmedia/terms/otos/index.html https://www.verizonmedia.com/policies/us/en/verizonmedia/ter...
- kevingadd 7y agoAFAIK they hadn't started doing mass-archiving either. They were still setting up.
- Diagon 7y agoCorrect. They had done some testing, but that's all. They were just getting yahoo id's, while iterating on software improvements, so they could then download the groups.
- arianestrasse 7y agoJust playing a devil's advocate here. The way archivists are downloading the data can be said to disrupt the services, which is mentioned in the terms of service: 2. d. viii: "interfere with or disrupt the Services or servers, systems or networks connected to the Services in any way." I'd also like to point out that the apparent spokesperson Brenda Fowler said in her open letter to Verizon, that "If the problem is that all our attempts to rescue our archives in the time we have left is causing an overload or strain on your servers, then stop making us HAVE to work around the clock, and GIVE US MORE TIME. ..." Probably not the wisest thing to say right now. Also, archiving the groups with automated tools is against the Use of Services rule, that states the following: 2. e: "Use of Services. You must follow any guidelines or policies associated with the Services. You must not misuse or interfere with the Services or try to access them using a method other than the interface and the instructions that we provide. ..." As I mentioned in another comment, I really support the cause and am a big fan of archiving myself but it's unfortunately quite clear that Verizon is right at calling out the violations of "terms of service".
- egfx 7y agoIn the early 2000’s there existed two main ecosystems in mobile software J2ME and BREW (not counting Symbian) the latter BREW, operated by Verizon. I had cofounded a QA consulting company that heavily based itself off BREW’s highly extensive developer portal. Then one day without warning, the developer portal disappeared. Luckily I had the foresight to download all the documentation a week before. My cofounder, a Microsoft developer was dumbfounded.
- Diagon 7y agoYes, this was incredibly sudden, and with not support for getting out. They gave 13 days notice of intention to shut down new additions to message archives (extended to 20 days after some commotion). That was October 21, I believe. They have offered a broken group downloader that produces incomplete results. Desperate group owners have been using a Windows piece of software called PGDownload, but Verizon has blocked that. Now the only organized effort is being actively interfered with. Dumbfounding is indeed the word.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Diagon 7y agoOther collective projects to try to archive Yahoo groups: Queer Digital History Project: https://queerdigital.com/ygpresproject https://queerdigital.com/ygpresproject Project to Archive Trans Yahoo Groups: https://archivetransyahoo.noblogs.org/list-of-known-trans-groups/ https://archivetransyahoo.noblogs.org/list-of-known-trans-gr... Project to Archive South Asian American yahoo groups: https://yahoogroups.southasianamerican.org/ https://yahoogroups.southasianamerican.org/ I've got to guess that there are more.
- macawfish 7y agoThis is really unfortunate. There's an amateur microscopy community on Yahoo groups with tons of information about old research microscopes. Corporations can really suck.
- oneepic 7y agoI wonder if this would be a workable idea: Create a service for long-term storage with an easy integration API; the idea would be that if you integrate your data with our service, and you eventually (maybe you're going out of business, or something) make a call to delete data, that data is first transferred to our service before deleting it on your end. Integrating with us is basically like making a reservation in advance, so when you do perform the big delete like what's happening to these groups, it's offloaded to this service first. I have no good idea about how to store/structure the data, or how it would make money. But I also have no idea if there's an easier solution to problems like this, where you force users to scramble to save all their stuff somewhere. People would also begin judging services by whether their data will be saved once it's terminated (ie whether you integrate with us or not), so I feel like that would ultimately bring in a lot of customers.
- BlueTemplar 7y agoP2P software has solved this problem a while ago?
- oneepic 7y agoWith modifications, maybe. Like, you don't have to store everything on the service's end until you're ready to delete it. Also we don't seem to have a P2P service with the kind of contract I mentioned.
- BlueTemplar 7y agoRedundancy is built-in P2P, so deletion is not an issue. (Popularity is - but systems like Flixxo have tried to tackle the issue...) Also, what about IPFS ?
- a3n 7y agoDon't use free corporate services for shit you care about. Or think you may care about later. Don't use any service that suffers from a single point of control. How much anguish when Facebook inevitably either goes away or pivots entirely? Or HN, for that matter?
- Diagon 7y agoBoingBoing has picked this up: https://boingboing.net/2019/12/08/oath-makes-you-swear-2.html https://boingboing.net/2019/12/08/oath-makes-you-swear-2.htm...
- zfxfr 7y agoThere must be something I am missing somewhere. 1) I have been a member of a group for many years (Gann study group) . Last Friday I received a notification from the owner who was explaining the group was closing so he set up a new one somewhere else. I thought it would be nice if I made a backup. So I found a python script on github (there are dozen of scripts in various languages which can be used to backup a yahoo group there). It took me a couple of minute to get it working and then a while later. Voila ! I had it nicely packed on my hard drive. So why is it so hard to back up a group? I don't understand the problem. 2) "A phone company in the UK that assigns phone numbers using the groups and now will lose all those phone designations when it’s deleted." What? Well OK why not.. But? They are a phone company. There must be someone able to scrape all this data? I don't get it? There are so many ways to extract data from yahoo group.
- Diagon 7y agoMost people running these groups are not technical. Even if they got the word in time, the only option many of them could find was PGOnline, a Win pay software, which by this point Yahoo has blocked. Furthermore, even if they got it, what do they do with it? For many groups, the archives are a resource to be referred to. They need to be hosted somewhere, preferably with some kind of front-end search engine. Even better if the search engine integrates with any new posts on the forum they move to. The Archive Team has been taking requests for backups of groups for people who don't have the technical facility to run the python scripts. They then intend to make them available on the internet archive. The next project is making some kind of front end, in case group owners want to host that somewhere. Some of us, for example, will be doing that behind some kind of a forum login, so it won't be search engine indexed. As for your point 2, that was cut/pasted from the link in the OP, where it's describing that many groups are still using the platform. More relevant to this project, is that many groups are losing their archives, and those archives contain anything from scientific data, to hobbyist & howto information, to art and literature, etc.
- Diagon 7y agoPress Release: [Will be sent out to media. Thanks to those who are commenting here for useful bits of information that has been included.] Verizon Media/Yahoo closing down Yahoo Groups, with imminent loss of important history. Yahoo, now owned by Verizon, is in the process of partially closing down a two-decades long service, Yahoo Groups. This email list-serve/bulletin board is both a discussion platform and a repository of history for a large array of communities. Verizon intends to make all such history unavailable after December 14th of this year, having provided less than 2 and a half months of warning and, due to a broken system, having failed to alert numerous group owners and members. Some of the histories on this platform are important, not just to the early Internet, but even to academic research and scientific investigations. Examples are discussion groups that included WW-II veterans, many of whom are now deceased; queer and trans groups, some of whom have organized to try to preserve this history [1,2]; and minority/immigrant groups [3]. Those with scientific data include earthquake researchers, medical/biohacking groups, bird watchers with decades of data, and even material relevant to patent claims. Popular culture groups devoted to art have uploaded their works there, and fan-fiction groups exchanged stories and feedback [4]. Sadly, Verizon has not made arrangements to help people to preserve this material. This has resulted in individual Yahoo Group owners/moderators, most of whom do not have technical backgrounds, scrambling to find ways to download their archives. Yahoo claims they have provided a data exporter, but it is very incomplete. Groups include not only messages, but files, databases, calendars and other materials. Some more technical users have organized to take requests, crowd-sourcing the work to download these Groups. One such [4] has been in contact with the Internet Archive, with the objective of uploading whatever they can get to Archive.org. Unfortunately, for reasons we can't guess, Verizon has been actively obstructing these efforts [5]. We urgently request that if Verizon will not support efforts to preserve this material, then they at least allow some means that Group owners can download complete archives of their groups, and independent groups can download public Groups. For this, we also need more time. Support can be offered by spreading the word on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Hacker News, and other social media. Verizon can be contacted at: "Hans Vestberg, Chariman & CEO" <Hans.Vestberg@verizon.com> "Guru Gowrappan, Executive VP & group CEO, Verizon Media" <Guru.Gowrappan@verizon.com> "Ronan Dunne, Executive VP & group CEO, Verizon Consumer" <Ronan.Dunne@verizon.com> "Tami Erwin, Executive VP & group CEO, Verizon Business" <Tami.Erwin@verizon.com> Ways to support the projects listed in the links below may be found on their websites. Please contact the following people for further information: [For people here, just go to IRC as described in the link of the OP.] [1] Queer Digital History Project: https://queerdigital.com/ygpresproject https://queerdigital.com/ygpresproject [2] Project to Archive Trans Yahoo Groups: https://archivetransyahoo.noblogs.org/list-of-known-trans-groups/ https://archivetransyahoo.noblogs.org/list-of-known-trans-gr... [3] Project to Archive South Asian American yahoo groups: https://yahoogroups.southasianamerican.org/ https://yahoogroups.southasianamerican.org/ [4] Archive Team archiving Fandom but also taking requests from group owners: https://archiveteam.org/ https://archiveteam.org/ [5] Exchanges with Yahoo: https://modsandmembersblog.wordpress.com/2019/12/08/verizon-yahoo-bad-form/ https://modsandmembersblog.wordpress.com/2019/12/08/verizon-...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Diagon 7y agoCall For Action https://modsandmembersblog.wordpress.com/taking-action/ https://modsandmembersblog.wordpress.com/taking-action/ Don't miss the sidebar with these links: https://modsandmembersblog.wordpress.com/media-contacts/ https://modsandmembersblog.wordpress.com/media-contacts/ https://modsandmembersblog.wordpress.com/contacting-verizon-directly/ https://modsandmembersblog.wordpress.com/contacting-verizon-... https://modsandmembersblog.wordpress.com/contacting-verizon-yahoo-stockholders/ https://modsandmembersblog.wordpress.com/contacting-verizon-... Also, you can add these emails to the media contacts: "Reporter Katyanna Quach" <kquach@theregister.co.uk>, "Managing editor Gavin Clarke" <gavin.clarke@theregister.co.uk>, "Corey Wilson & Rachel Janc; Senior Director, Communications" <press@Wired.Com>, "Pitches" <submit@wired.com>, "Rich Woods" <rich.woods@neowin.net>, "Paul Thurrott" <paul@thurrott.com>, "Brad Sams" <brad@petri.com>, "Kate Rayford, Media Inquiries" <katie.rayford@slate.com>, "Bryan Lowder (LGBTQ issues/culture)" < bryan.lowder@slate.com>, "Torie Bosch (emerging technology effects on public policy and society)" <torie.bosch@slate.com>, "Jonathan Fischer (big tech, cities, media/internet culture)" <jonathan.fischer@slate.com>, "Susan Matthews, Health & Science" <susan.matthews@slate.com>, "Erika Allen, Executive Managing Editor" <erika.allen@vice.com>, "Katie Drummond, SVP, Global Content" <katie.drummond@vice.com>, "Press, US" <press@vice.com>, "Press, Canada" <presscanada@vice.com>, "Press, UK" <ukpressoffice@vice.com>, "Pitches, Culture" <culture.pitches@vice.com>, "Pitches, Tech" <tech.pitches@vice.com>, "Issues" <issues.pitches@vice.com>
- kevingadd 7y agoPlease be aware that historically spamming media representatives has the opposite of the intended effect. A few emails to make it clear that it's coming from a group instead of just one individual can help, but at the point where it becomes saturating inbox noise it tends to get ignored. It's not like interacting with political representatives or corporate PR/executive types where you're conveying the size of the interested party, in this case newsworthiness doesn't necessarily depend on how many people are sending the email.
- Diagon 7y agoPoint taken. There's also stuff there about contacting Verizon and contacting the shareholders of Verizon. For them, I think we need volume.
- rapht 7y agoI have trouble understanding how Yahoo's moves are GDPR-compliant : if just one European citizen was part of the group to be archived, at least some if not all data in the group can be considered part of their personal data (as they were either sender or recipient of messages) and therefore there should be a mechanism allowing them to download that data. Am I getting it wrong ?
- chb 7y ago>We are receiving comments and messages from the frustrated and angry groups archivists, and some of those are posted below. You can send in your own if you e-mail it to owlsy@yahoo.com. You're still using a yahoo.com email address to organize?
- Diagon 7y agoI've only just heard from this woman. She seems to be writing on the issue but not an archivist. (Though I'm not 100% clear.)
- dredmorbius 7y agoA suggestion I'd made during the G+ shutdown, and active interference (see: https://old.reddit.com/r/plexodus/comments/b87hpi/googles_attention_is_not_required_everything_is/ https://old.reddit.com/r/plexodus/comments/b87hpi/googles_at...), was that legal methods be employed. An injunction filed on behalf of Yahoo Groups users to maintain access, delay deletion, and facilitate archival, specifically. Is anyone working on this?
- Diagon 7y agoNot that I know of. Lawyers (hopefully not guns) and money would be needed. Suggestions?
- dredmorbius 7y agoI've had some preliminary discussions with EFF. There's a listing of online privacy and rights foundations I've compiled here: https://social.antefriguserat.de/index.php/Privacy_and_Electronic_Rights_Organisations https://social.antefriguserat.de/index.php/Privacy_and_Elect... Many are mostly dead. Which may mean partly alive. (That Wiki in general might best be merged with AT's efforts. I'm the principle editor.)
- Diagon 7y agoI've passed on your idea. What did EFF have to say? Anything hopeful?
- dredmorbius 7y agoBasically, to write up and explain the idea, and it'll get passed on to the right people. (At least one of whom is frequently seen on HN.)
- droithomme 7y agoYahoo has sent emails to everyone allowing them to click a button and get a zip file prepared with everything they have posted or stored on every Yahoo Group they have ever participated in. Blog author and people here believe that outsiders with no connection to these groups have an inherent right to download and republish all this information despite having no license to do so. Yahoo/Verizon seems to think differently.
- betamaxthetape 7y agoThere have been lots of reports that this 'Get My Data' function doesn't work. One of the demands made by the blog author is for Yahoo to fix this so it actually does work. Additionally, the 'Get My Data' only gives you access to all the files / photos that you uploaded to the group. These archives should not be considered complete archives of the group - is it really reasonable to suggest that in order to completely back up a group, every member must complete their own data request?
- Diagon 7y agoYes, when a group owner wants to migrate to another platform - a bulletin board or the like - they need to be able to get all the group associated data so they can reconstitute their community.
- droithomme 7y ago> 'Get My Data' only gives you access to all the files / photos that you uploaded to the group Your comment is quite interesting! I did not receive only my own contributions, but got fairly large files that seem to me to be exhaustive archives of all posts and other materials uploaded by any and all group members during the entire time I was a member of each group. It's pretty interesting if different people are being sent totally different things though as you indicate. Maybe I am just lucky. I'm pretty happy myself that they have this method to get everything from the time I was a member of any group. I can't think of any other service that provides for that. Yahoo seems to be the most open and data accessible service I can recall. Other boards facing imminent shutdown I had to go to a lot of trouble to scrape old posts using bot scripts, which was inconvenient.
- ComodoHacker 7y agoIs this the future of Facebook when personal data use become heavily regulated, the data will become harder to monetize and the next big thing rize on the horizon?
- Diagon 7y agoProbably. Now that the groups I am concerned with are migrating to our own hosted BB, we are also planning to migrate the associated FB groups away. For that, we expect to lose data in the process.
- gerbilly 7y agoIt's a shame. I guess the lawyers got involved. Maybe the only good thing to come from this is that it reminds us to think twice before entrusting all our data to cloud based software companies. And if you do put your app/data in the 'cloud' make sure you have offline backups. Cloud platforms are like share cropping (farming on rented land).
- tossAfterUsing 7y agoi can't possibly be the only person here who has been expecting this type of fuckery for 10+ years, right? it's taken me that long to get to a place where i feel confident that my own personal archive of data isn't going to disappear from control. side note: it's too bad that ssbc isn't quite ready to deploy at scale for the types of folks who rely on Yahoo Groups for this service. sure seems like a great resource.
- JohnClark1337 7y agoVerizon: Hey, what's this thing? Yahoo: Oh, just something we made years ago Verizon: Is it making us money? Yahoo: Well, no Verizon: Kill it Yahoo: But people are still... Verizon: Kill it now
- thomasjudge 7y agoHypothetically could some one or group file a lawsuit or request an injunction to get a stay of the deletion date?
- iforgotpassword 7y agoJust thinking out loud: This makes me wonder if we can learn from this and prepare to backup other (similar) platforms that hold such an amount of data and might go away some day. Building the backup tools today and ideally starting to backup now, making the process incremental so you can run it every now and then and only scrape the new stuff.
- FrozenVoid 7y agoModern Web3.0 portals that built on async JS will be impossible to archive without hitting API limits or resource quotas. New Reddit(without the old.reddit.com interface) for example. Many niche subreddits contain lots of information that would be lost if reddit dies(or just deletes these subreddits). Youtube is unarchivable in principle due high amount of storage required(even thinking of 640x480) and yet it still contains tons of unique content found nowhere else from rare AMVs(that survived prior deletions) to instructions to repair telescopes - or basically anything in video form that doesn't have backups(i.e.not uploaded to other videos sites). 4chan and similar sites are archived by several sites in haphazard manner(only boards they like) and yet it a huge chunk of internet culture that is going to be lost if these sites die(and its more probable than Reddit due less funding). Usenet is slowly fading into obscurity and dependence on Google Groups. Many forums that today exist, will not exist forever: yet very few are archived anywhere else. Other forum-like sites like Stackoverflow and Quora might disappear in the future with nothing replacing them. Github is subject to Microsoft whims and positions on open-source. Wikipedia and various wiki farm sites don't have much revenue streams. Practically every major website we take for granted is vulnerable - people thought Yahoo Groups was going to last forever.
- pepijndevos 7y agoThis is very sad to hear. One particular piece of Yahoo groups that I particularly care about is the LTSpice group, which contained a lot of simulation models I've not been able to find anywhere else. Luckily, this particular one seems to have been migrated to https://groups.io/g/LTspice https://groups.io/g/LTspice
- Diagon 7y agoSomeone else mentioned that group on this thread. A group member. Scroll to the second page. He mentioned it along with a number of other groups worth archiving.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Diagon 7y agoMore media attention at zdnet: https://www.zdnet.com/article/verizon-kills-email-accounts-of-archivists-trying-to-save-yahoo-groups-history/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/verizon-kills-email-accounts-o...
- Diagon 7y agoYet another article at TheInquirer: https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3084557/verizon-blocks-archivists-yahoo-group-content https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3084557/verizon-bl...
- rthomas6 7y agoThings like this are a good answer to when people question why internet centralization and walled gardens matter. If these things were hosted across thousands of servers, federated, or under a license that made them able to be copied, there would be no issue. This is only an issue in the first place because people posted content in a place and manner that made them give up ownership to it. One day, perhaps decades from now, Facebook is going to face the same problem. Twitter would, too, if it wasn't being archived by the Library of Congress.
- AQ2 7y agoI have a disability group that actively discourages email messages and recommends - or, that is, recommended - that members use the Files section for answers to frequent questions. Email is for questions not answered in Files. This group would be intolerable without a website, with the same questions asked over and over and over again. Yahoo is totally wrong that email is all groups need.
- Diagon 7y agoYes, exactly. Other groups have medical tests uploaded to the files section, to be shared with other members and discussed on-list. And yet others had artistic works or literature.
- mleonhard 7y agoIf you have Verizon mobile service, call them! In the US, dial 611, say "representative" at the prompt, then dial 3 for "something else." I have Verizon prepaid, so switching is easy. I called and politely explained the situation to the customer service representative. I informed them that I will definitely switch away from Verizon if they delete the Yahoo Groups data without allowing archival. They promised to inform their manager and email me back.
- lnanek2 7y agoThis is pretty standard. Google Groups bans me whenever I open too many tabs at once. It's annoying, but these big corps don't have any inclination to support user behavior other than standard, especially when closing down a product. I think the blocking bit is sensationalizing it a bit more than is the reality. The site policies and design intentionally prevent joining a group just to download everything, it's not an intentional blocking of a group or action beyond the default behavior of enforcing the TOS.
- Diagon 7y agoWell, it was actually intentional. While a lot of us were backing up our groups as individuals (whether as owners or just members), and having no trouble there, the Archive Team was taking requests. So there was volume involved, and they have been in touch with Yahoo who refused to be supportive of the archive effort. So their target really was these guys specifically. Not just the ToS, but these guys in the context of an archive effort at a point of "ToS" (Termination of Service).
- dartdartdart 7y agoLost 15 years worth of email with yahoo since I didn't sign in for 1 year. No extensive warning either. Yahoo sucks
- crazypython 7y agoCan we bypass their firewall protection?
- Cougher 7y agoWe have examples of content that was destroyed because it was deemed trivial at the time, one example being the BBC's policy of erasing its television shows so the tape could be used for new shows. The policy began with the idea that a television broadcast was a temporary communication like radio, and really, what possible reason could there be for people in the future to want to watch things like comedy shows. Dr Who, or news programs from the 60s, or the BBC's coverage of the Apollo moon landing? Surely the value of these cultural artifacts was not as great as the cost of video tape? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiping#BBC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiping#BBC
- giancarlostoro 7y agoThis reminds me of my MSN Groups groups I had as a kid. I wish I could go back and see them, but I wasn't "big" enough, even though I had like 80 members.
- jhallenworld 7y agoI'm an occasional yahoo groups user. I'm pleased to find that the owners of the groups I'm interested in have moved their content to groups.io. These include mostly support groups for obsolete hardware and software. I would say that something like github would be a better place, except for copyright problems. Yahoo groups were better for quasi-legal archiving. I'm wishing that Groups.io was hosted outside of the US for this reason..
- Diagon 7y agoMore media attention: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/59nnek/verizon-is-blocking-efforts-to-preserve-internet-history https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/59nnek/verizon-is-blockin... https://slate.com/technology/2019/12/yahoo-groups-is-ending-and-verizon-is-making-it-hard-for-people-to-archive-its-content.html https://slate.com/technology/2019/12/yahoo-groups-is-ending-... https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/12/verizon-reportedly-blocks-archivists-from-yahoo-groups-days-before-deletion/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/12/verizon-reported... https://www.npr.org/2019/12/09/786469397/internet-historians-mourn-loss-of-cultural-record-as-yahoo-deletes-group-archive https://www.npr.org/2019/12/09/786469397/internet-historians...
- Diagon 7y agoReports that there is an extension of the deadline to download groups until Jan. 31 are a smokescreen put up by Verizon. The Dec. 14 deadline still holds, but they will take requests of users for their data until Jan 31. This is a fail because: From Yahoo's reply to the modsandmembers group: "The Groups Download Manager will download any content an individual posted to Yahoo Groups. However, it will not download attachments and photos uploaded to the Group by other members. For those that are having difficulty with the files delivered, this help article explains the types of files within the .zip file sent ... " The point made on IRC: The important point is they won't give you the vast majority of photos and attachments. They also don't export databases at all, which are important for certain groups. It's completely arbitrary too, because they give you files other people posted...
- Diagon 7y agoWe've got another article. https://www.fastcompany.com/90440817/bill-gates-solves-your-gift-problems-here-are-his-top-5-books-for-the-holidays https://www.fastcompany.com/90440817/bill-gates-solves-your-...
- Dignium 7y agoAnybody who has FU money: start filing papers for a lawsuit against Yahoo and notify them of your intention to do so. Pay for expedited filing. This is the worst kind of PR for a company and they'll do almost anything to avoid being sued in the first place. A settlement offer is Not An Option. Anybody living in the SF Bay Area, Especially if you live in the Silicon Valley: Pay a visit to Yahoo Global HQ. Find out the borders of their property, park and picket right outside them. Anybody with the resources: Make / Print a banner that says something like: yahoo! #WENEEDMORETIME! #YahooGroups To drape over this pedestrian bridge located at [37.397547, -122.022673] https://goo.gl/maps/XknYg9H3BYWZPESF9 https://goo.gl/maps/XknYg9H3BYWZPESF9 South Entrance Address: 101 E Ahwanee Ave, Sunnyvale, CA 94089 (Intersection of W. Ahwanee Ave. & Borregas Ave.) P.S.: A good alternate location is the US-101 Mathilda Avenue Overpass, on the sidewalk southbound / northbound (37.398832, -122.027722)
- amatecha 7y agoAnyone know why the service is being shut down? Is it perhaps because of the California Consumer Privacy Act[0] that comes into effect in Jan 2020 and they know they can't possibly comply with these new regulations? That's my personal guess... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Consumer_Privacy_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Consumer_Privacy_Ac...
- Dignium 7y agoToday is Friday on the US West Coast. Today's the Day we FLOOD Verizon's Call Center, the Verizon Execs, and March outside of Yahoo Global HQ. #StormVerizon This is it. TODAY, FRIDAY THE 13TH OF DECEMBER 2019 is the day we STORM for the Board to RESCIND their decision to pull the plug Saturday Night, to give us at MINIMUM 4 more weeks to archive our archives. NOW IS THE TIME. DO NOT WAIT until after 5 PM Pacific Time to send your messages. WE NEED /B/, WE NEED YOU, WE NEED THE PEOPLE OF THE INTERNET to #STORMVERIZON. #STORMVERIZON Please don't attempt to physically storm into Yahoo or Verizon property. Like Area 51, It's not gonna work. By StormVerizon, I mean storm Verizon's lines of communication ---------------------------------------------------- [https://modsandmembersblog.wordpress.com/contacting-verizon-directly/ https://modsandmembersblog.wordpress.com/contacting-verizon-...] Well, we’re pretty much down to CRUNCH time, as time is starting to run out for Yahoo Groups. So now I need your help. Here is how to contact Verizon directly. I don’t have a LOT of ways to do it, but I have a few, plus they have a public contact page that I’ll give you a link for. BY E-MAIL * Hans Vestberg — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer E-Mail: Hans.Vestberg@verizon.com Twitter: @hansvestberg Ronan Dunne — Executive Vice President E-Mail ronan.dunne@verizon.com Twitter @RonanDunneVZ You can e-mail almost everyone from the Verizon Company Page which is public. However, you can only e-mail ONE person a day from the site. https://www.verizon.com/about/our-company/executive-bios https://www.verizon.com/about/our-company/executive-bios BY TWITTER * Several of them post a public Twitter ID, so to make it easier, I’m going to post them here: Tami Erwin : Executive Vice President & CEO, Verizon Business Group @TamiErwinVZ Guru Gowrappan: Executive Vice President & CEO, Verizon Media Group @gurugk Rose Stuckey Kirk: Chief Corporate Social Responsibility Officer @RoseStuckeyKirk Rima Qureshi: Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer @QureshiVz Diegeo Scotti: Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer @diegoscotti Shellye L. Archambeau: Board Member @ShelArchambeau Mark T. Bertolini: Board Member @mtbert Vittorio Colao: Board Member @vitt61 Daniel H. Schulman: Board Member and President/CEO of Paypal @Dan_Schulman WITH TELEPHONE NUMBERS * Yep. I’ve been busy tracking down telephone numbers for Verizon, all able to be found online if you look hard enough. So here they are: Verizon Headquarters Info: Phone Number: Call 1-212-395-1000 or fax 1-212-517-1897 to reach someone at the corporate office and Verizon headquarters. THIS NUMBER GOES TO THE CEO’S OFFICE. YOU THEN GET RE-ROUTED, BUT IF PEOPLE CALL ENOUGH MAYBE THEY’LL PAY MORE ATTENTION. Other numbers: Verizon Corporate: 1-212-395-1000 Verizon Landline Support 1-800-533-3322 – Choose the option to speak to an agent. Another number was 1-800-922-0204 Choose Option 7 And the last one (actually the first number I started with) is: 1-908-559-4449 Justina Nixon Saintl, Assistant to Rose Stuckey Kirk who is the Chief Corporate Social Responsibility Officer Just for the record, Rose Stuckey Kirk and Guru Gowrappan are people I BELIEVE are overseeing or are part of the Yahoo Groups Experience. Call it a hunch, but I believe it. Remember when calling Verizon to be respectful, tell them you’re a groups user or owner and tell them the problems, that we need more time, that you’re upset about losing your info, etc. They will probably re-route you, but at least they will know you called, and that will start to be noticed if enough people call. One more contact and I’m done here for tonight! The Yahoo Concierge. I managed to get a reply from her because of tweeting to @Yahoo Care and that was how I eventually got to my direct contact. Her name is Marie, and you can write her directly at: concierge@cc.yahoo-inc.com The only person I’m not giving anyone is my direct contact, because his information is not public. But I feel like we need someone with more power than he has anyway. I’m still routing downloading problems and other things to him, but it’s time to point out to Verizon how many there are of us, how much we care about our groups content, and how upset we are about the deadline that we have to find a way to delay. Any and all help contacting these people is huge. We only have 20 days left to stop this disaster from happening. Nightowl >8# --------------------------------------------- #STORMVERIZON Please don't attempt to physically storm into Yahoo or Verizon property. Like Area 51, It's not gonna work. By StormVerizon, I mean storm Verizon's lines of communication #STORMVERIZON