Digital Dark Age, even within sites

Internet

I got this error from CNET while attempting to view an old article:

RUH-ROH
404
You are here in error. Let’s not point fingers.
Instead, use your paws to check out some
amazing stories below.

I’m not here in error; CNET once had an article at that address. Either redirects aren’t set correctly, or the original article was deleted. And they would have got away with it if it weren’t for those pesky kids.

I’ve been seeing this a lot lately, from CNET to Microsoft. The Digital Dark Age was a warning about content disappearing when sites go offline, but even the latter still existing isn’t a guarantee now.

Archiving content and preserving our digital history are critically important. Archive.org does an important job preserving what they can with their Wayback Machine, but we should be doing it too.

This post was originally set to be published yesterday, but Australian internet had other plans.

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Ruben Schade is a technical writer and infrastructure architect in Sydney, Australia who refers to himself in the third person. Hi!

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