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I don't understand why Yahoo or whoever is orchestrating this shutdown is so hostile to the archival process. People are offering their own time and storage spa

I don't understand why Yahoo or whoever is orchestrating this shutdown is so hostile to the archival process. People are offering their own time and storage space, how hard would it be for whoever is working on the shutdown to just allow people to easily download all the raw data, instead of having them manually scrapping. Wouldn't the latter be much worse for both parties? This is data going back decades, there has to be someone in power somewhere on that team that realizes the value of this data? We're not asking them to keep it up, just to make it easy to archive.

colejohnson66 7y ago
It’s almost certainly a “legal said so” thing.
judge2020 7y ago
Some previous discussion on it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21738093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21738093
aogl 7y ago
Also serving content for scraping would use more resources on Yahoo's side, as opposed top providing a single downloadable tar or equivalent. But as others have said, this no doubt comes back to something the legal team said could not happen.. RIP
droithomme 7y ago
Some don't want their old posts archived for eternity, for privacy reasons. Yahoo had a nice interface to allow everyone that was a member of any group to download everything for their personal and private use, and it worked fine. Random external parties republishing other people's old posts though is not OK at all and is a massive breech of privacy, and is a violation. Because of the threat that one's opinions may be archived and forevermore propagated by random third parties, at this point in history one would have to be insane to express a genuine opinion publicly. Therefore these efforts have a chilling effect on free speech and are inimical to democracy.
- pests 7y ago
  If Yahoo Groups wasn't going down your posts would be forever accessible anyways. What does it matter if they are archived by first party or third party?
  - bluntfang 7y ago
    Mostly because you've entered into an agreement with the first party (however dubious, that's another argument) and have consented to their terms to use their platform. There wasn't a checkbox that said "I consent to third parties storing all of my information after we decide to shutdown the platform". Consent is paramount to privacy, and archiving everything without consent is a breaking a huge privacy and trust boundary.
    - betamaxthetape 7y ago
      Going into this, we did understand that this could be a concern. We are committed to working with group moderators as we work to make what we've saved available, and will be honoring valid take-down requests for content that people that prefer the content to not be online.
      - bluntfang 7y ago
        Sorry, but you're doing consent wrong. Consent is something received before an action.
        bnj 7y ago
        Would you mind clarifying your objection for me? Don't authors of posts assume the risk that third parties will copy and reuse the content when they publish it?
        bluntfang 7y ago
        Just because the risk is there doesn't mean we should be forced to accept it. There is currently a battle waging for our privacy.
_pmf_ 7y ago
Copyright? Maybe some groups were private at some point, or the copyright by posts was granted to Yahoo, but not any scraper? (I fully suppose maliciousness, but there might be plausible non-malicious justifications.)
thrownaway954 7y ago
sometimes people want to let things die and for good reason. i can only image what a burden it has been to police something like a newsgroup server over the years. i can also imagine that they haven't caught everything, so they just want it to go away. remember that not everything is precious and needs to be reserved.
- betamaxthetape 7y ago
  I completely agree, but the way they handled this was appalling: (a) The "We're deleting all your content" message was only visible on group home pages, not when viewing messages, meaning a lot of the people who used the web-interface didn't know about the shutdown. (b) The email sent out to all members about the deletion was sent weeks after the initial notice, often didn't arrive, and was inaccurate (dates had changed by the time people received the email). So many folks that used the email interface also didn't know about the deletion. (c) The amount of time given was far too short. Yahoo Groups had existed as a brand since January 2001, and was based off Yahoo Clubs / eGroups, both of which had existed for several years before that. Two months notice for a 20+ year old service is laughable. (c) The site has been unreliable during the last few months, due to the high traffic of people trying to save their stuff. This has significantly complicated efforts to archive it. (d) Yahoo's solution to the data destruction, their "Get My Data" feature, is poorly thought out and often doesn't work. No photos are included in the download unless uploaded by that account. Many groups had members who uploaded photos / scans / schematics / etc.. and since left the group. Those photos are now lost. We've also found the downloads to be missing content that necessitated the request be made multiple times until you could patch together a complete version from all the incomplete ones.
- D-Coder 7y ago
  > remember that not everything is precious and needs to be reserved. And that's Yahoo's decision to make?

colejohnson66 7y ago

It’s almost certainly a “legal said so” thing.

judge2020 7y ago

Some previous discussion on it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21738093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21738093

aogl 7y ago

Also serving content for scraping would use more resources on Yahoo's side, as opposed top providing a single downloadable tar or equivalent. But as others have said, this no doubt comes back to something the legal team said could not happen.. RIP

droithomme 7y ago

Some don't want their old posts archived for eternity, for privacy reasons. Yahoo had a nice interface to allow everyone that was a member of any group to download everything for their personal and private use, and it worked fine. Random external parties republishing other people's old posts though is not OK at all and is a massive breech of privacy, and is a violation. Because of the threat that one's opinions may be archived and forevermore propagated by random third parties, at this point in history one would have to be insane to express a genuine opinion publicly. Therefore these efforts have a chilling effect on free speech and are inimical to democracy.

pests 7y ago
If Yahoo Groups wasn't going down your posts would be forever accessible anyways. What does it matter if they are archived by first party or third party?
- bluntfang 7y ago
  Mostly because you've entered into an agreement with the first party (however dubious, that's another argument) and have consented to their terms to use their platform. There wasn't a checkbox that said "I consent to third parties storing all of my information after we decide to shutdown the platform". Consent is paramount to privacy, and archiving everything without consent is a breaking a huge privacy and trust boundary.
  - betamaxthetape 7y ago
    Going into this, we did understand that this could be a concern. We are committed to working with group moderators as we work to make what we've saved available, and will be honoring valid take-down requests for content that people that prefer the content to not be online.
    - bluntfang 7y ago
      Sorry, but you're doing consent wrong. Consent is something received before an action.
      - bnj 7y ago
        Would you mind clarifying your objection for me? Don't authors of posts assume the risk that third parties will copy and reuse the content when they publish it?
        bluntfang 7y ago
        Just because the risk is there doesn't mean we should be forced to accept it. There is currently a battle waging for our privacy.

_pmf_ 7y ago

Copyright? Maybe some groups were private at some point, or the copyright by posts was granted to Yahoo, but not any scraper? (I fully suppose maliciousness, but there might be plausible non-malicious justifications.)

thrownaway954 7y ago

sometimes people want to let things die and for good reason. i can only image what a burden it has been to police something like a newsgroup server over the years. i can also imagine that they haven't caught everything, so they just want it to go away. remember that not everything is precious and needs to be reserved.

betamaxthetape 7y ago
I completely agree, but the way they handled this was appalling: (a) The "We're deleting all your content" message was only visible on group home pages, not when viewing messages, meaning a lot of the people who used the web-interface didn't know about the shutdown. (b) The email sent out to all members about the deletion was sent weeks after the initial notice, often didn't arrive, and was inaccurate (dates had changed by the time people received the email). So many folks that used the email interface also didn't know about the deletion. (c) The amount of time given was far too short. Yahoo Groups had existed as a brand since January 2001, and was based off Yahoo Clubs / eGroups, both of which had existed for several years before that. Two months notice for a 20+ year old service is laughable. (c) The site has been unreliable during the last few months, due to the high traffic of people trying to save their stuff. This has significantly complicated efforts to archive it. (d) Yahoo's solution to the data destruction, their "Get My Data" feature, is poorly thought out and often doesn't work. No photos are included in the download unless uploaded by that account. Many groups had members who uploaded photos / scans / schematics / etc.. and since left the group. Those photos are now lost. We've also found the downloads to be missing content that necessitated the request be made multiple times until you could patch together a complete version from all the incomplete ones.
D-Coder 7y ago
> remember that not everything is precious and needs to be reserved. And that's Yahoo's decision to make?